On the PC Dragon Naturally Speaking is the one most vendors base on. I have a mac at home, and have tried iListen, it was horrible, but it was a more basic version. Macs have several "speakable item" controls built-in. They ironically usually require you to press a key to signal the machine to listen to the voice command, which kind of defeats the purpose... The keystroke thing can be programmed away, but it's an annoyance. You can supposedly use iListen to map keywords to every keystroke shortcut in the computer and all it's software apps. I just didn't have much luck "teaching" it my voice. A quality headset microphone is supposed to help. I explored using this setup for quad patients to control a video editing program. It works on paper, but not too good yet in practice, the apps you're trying to control may not be as complicated.
Depending on your friend's level of functioning, the head-tracking software used by flight simmers works very well for say C-5 or better. You or a helper must stick a small self-adhesive dot decal on the bridge of your eyeglasses or your forehead, (comes with a set plus refills) then the thing tracks your head posture just like a mouse. Add a puffer switch for mouse click and you're in business. In Illinois, some places to look at for adaptation equipment would include the world-renowned Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and try the state of Illinois web page, department of Human Services, for their Assistive technology Clearinghouse program. They have samples of every device out there and can make recommendations. Best of luck with it. RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
