Voice typing and IBM
When typing is the slow part of writing.
Typing is built from thousands of small finger movements; speaking is not. This is a plain guide to voice typing on Windows — the free tools already installed, how to stop a tool mishearing the words you use most, and what to check before paying for anything.
Typing slows down long before anything else does.
It is a particular kind of frustration, because so little else has changed. The thinking is sharp. The words are all there. Speech is normal. What has gone is the unconscious flow of fingers across a keyboard — and because that flow was invisible while it worked, its absence is hard to explain to anyone who still has it.
What it looks like in practice is not dramatic. Some emails never get sent. Meeting notes get thinner. The longer message you meant to write becomes a shorter one, and then a like. For people who built careers and friendships on top of writing, that adds up to something bigger than an inconvenience.
CaringDictate exists because of exactly this. The first person it was built for is an older man in our own family whose evenings had been taken over by a backlog of messages and notes he could no longer type quickly. Dictating gave those evenings back. It is ordinary dictation software — not a medical device, not certified assistive technology, and it makes no claim to do anything for any condition. It is a way of getting words onto a screen without a keyboard.
Start with the free tools already on your computer
Windows 11 includes voice typing — Windows key + H in any text box — and Voice Access, a fuller system for controlling the whole computer by voice, with dictation, its own vocabulary and text correction. Both are free and already installed. On a Mac, Apple Dictation is built in, and Apple's Voice Control adds custom vocabulary and commands. Google Docs has voice typing in Chrome at no cost.
Try those before paying anyone, ourselves included. If one of them covers your writing, that is a genuinely good outcome.
The words it keeps getting wrong
This is the thing that decides whether people stick with dictation, and it is almost never discussed in reviews. General dictation handles ordinary prose well. What it struggles with is the small set of words that are specific to you: your colleagues' surnames, your town, your medication, the jargon of your trade. And because those words are the ones you use most, a tool that mishears them feels much worse than its overall accuracy suggests.
- Look for a personal word list. Most serious dictation tools let you add words so they are recognised properly. It is the single most useful feature for long-term use, and the first thing to check for.
- Add words as you hit them, not all at once. Five minutes over the first fortnight, catching each mistake as it happens, gets you further than an hour of planning.
- Spelling out is the fallback. For a one-off name, saying the letters is faster than fixing the word afterwards.
- Train-your-voice tools are a different answer. Products built around a personal profile, such as Dragon, let you teach the software your vocabulary properly. That is real work up front and a real advantage afterwards, and if your vocabulary is unusual it may be worth the trade.
- Judge a trial on your own words. Dictate a real email full of the names you actually use, not a test paragraph. That is the transcript that tells you something.
What to check before you pay for anything
- Can you start and stop it easily? A key, a mouse button, a foot pedal or a spoken phrase — check the control can be changed to suit your hands.
- Does it type into the programs you actually use? Some tools write into their own window and you copy the text out; others insert directly into whatever had the cursor.
- Is there a personal word list? For the reasons above, this matters more over months than any headline feature.
- Where does your voice go? Some tools process speech on a server, some on your own machine. That matters for privacy and on a slow connection.
- Can you try it on your own voice first? No review can tell you how a tool handles the way you speak.
CaringDictate is one of the paid options. It runs its speech recognition on your own computer, it types into most Windows programs, you choose the control that starts it, and it is a one-time $49 purchase with a free seven-day trial.
Where voice typing tends to help
What people find useful about typing by voice.
Writing without gripping or pressing.
Typing is built from small, repeated finger movements. Dictation moves the writing to your voice — the only physical action left is starting and stopping.
Works in most Windows programs.
Email, Word, Teams chat, online forms, search bars. The text goes into whatever field you were already typing in, with no new program to learn.
A word list for the words that matter to you.
Names, places and terminology can be added to a personal list, which is the practical fix when a tool keeps mishearing the same word.
Built because of one person in particular.
The first user of CaringDictate is an older man in our own family whose evenings were disappearing into a backlog of typing. That is the reason this software exists.
What people use it for
Real things, written every day, without the keyboard.
- Meeting notes, at work or in volunteer roles. Capturing what was said without a long typing session afterwards.
- Emails to family and former colleagues. Keeping relationships going without losing an evening to a single long message.
- Teams chat and messaging apps. The quick back-and-forth that piles up fastest when typing is slow.
- Insurance forms, medical portals, banking sites. Small fields and real deadlines. Most web form fields accept dictated text.
- Writing a memoir, journal or family history. The long pieces that stay in your head when the typing is the obstacle.
The honest part
CaringDictate is ordinary dictation software. It is not a medical device, it is not certified assistive technology, and it makes no claim to perform in any particular way for Inclusion Body Myositis. It uses general-purpose speech-recognition models that run on your own computer.
How well any dictation tool understands you depends on your voice, your microphone, the room you are in and the model you choose. Nobody can tell you in advance how it will do — which is exactly why there is a free 7-day trial, and why the 30-day refund is a genuine invitation rather than a formality. If a free tool already built into Windows does the job, use that instead and keep your money. If a specialist tool built for atypical speech is a better match, that is the one to buy.
Common questions
Questions about voice typing and Inclusion Body Myositis
My hands are weak. Is dictation enough on its own?
For the writing part, it can be — dictation removes the keyboard from the equation, and the only physical action left is starting and stopping, which can be a key, a mouse button, a foot pedal or a spoken phrase. What it does not replace is pointing, so a comfortable mouse or trackball still matters for the rest of using a computer. Whether the balance works for you is individual, and the free tools in Windows cost nothing to find out with.
Does it handle technical vocabulary and shorthand?
It transcribes what you say, including spoken punctuation — say "open paren" and you get "(", say "new paragraph" and you get a paragraph break. For terminology it keeps getting wrong — medication names, industry jargon, unusual surnames — you can add words to a personal list so it recognises them. That list is the difference between a tool that annoys you daily and one you stop noticing, and it is worth checking whether any tool you are considering has one.
My typing still works, just slowly. Is it worth changing?
That is a genuine judgement call and the honest answer is that it depends on how much of your writing you have quietly stopped doing. Some people find speaking faster and keep using it on good days too; others prefer the keyboard and use dictation only for the long pieces. The free tools cost nothing to test that with, and our trial is seven days — which is enough to tell you which one you are.
Should I mention this to an occupational therapist?
They are a much better source of advice on this than we are — they know your situation and we do not, and dictation is one option among several they will know about. What we can offer from our side is practical detail about the software itself if that is useful to them: how the start control is configured, and the fact that recognition runs on your own computer. Email hello@caringdictate.com and a person will answer.
How does it compare to Dragon?
Dragon Professional v16 is the established desktop dictation product and it does a great deal that we do not attempt: custom voice commands and macros, a vocabulary you can train on your own terminology, and transcription of recorded audio files, including whole folders at a time. Nuance claim 99% recognition accuracy from first use, and they do not list a price on their product page — check with them or an authorised reseller. CaringDictate is a much smaller tool at $49 once: typing by voice, recording and transcribing your own meetings, recognition on your own machine, and a control you choose. If the Dragon feature list is what you need, buy Dragon.
Will it learn my voice over time?
No, and it is worth being clear about that because the two approaches genuinely differ. Tools built around a trained profile, Dragon among them, improve as you teach them your voice and vocabulary. CaringDictate uses general models that are the same for everyone — there is no enrolment session to sit through, and equally no way to train it. What you can do is add specific words to a personal list. If being able to train the software matters to you, that is a real reason to choose a product built that way.