I hope they take speech impediments/impairments in to account with this. I know a friend of mine had a nightmare trying to activate by phone because she has a lisp and the automated thing kept asking her to repeat herself.

I'm sure they will take the most common moderate/mild speech impediments into account. For people with more serious speech problems, MS needs to make sure that there are always good ol' buttons as a backup. I personally would not enjoy having to vocalize everything I want a given device to do, and I have no speech problems that I am aware of.

BCXtreme said:

I'm sure they will take the most common moderate/mild speech impediments into account. For people with more serious speech problems, MS needs to make sure that there are always good ol' buttons as a backup. I personally would not enjoy having to vocalize everything I want a given device to do, and I have no speech problems that I am aware of.

I'm not sure if those voice recognition things still do or not. They used tell you that you could say the command or press a number. Now they just say to tell it something. With a couple different ones I've tried pressing the corresponding number (pressing #2 for the second option listed) and it did absolutely nothing. I can't stand the things myself, so I can hardly imagine what she must go through with em.

Petey7 said:

BCXtreme said:

I'm sure they will take the most common moderate/mild speech impediments into account. For people with more serious speech problems, MS needs to make sure that there are always good ol' buttons as a backup. I personally would not enjoy having to vocalize everything I want a given device to do, and I have no speech problems that I am aware of.

I'm not sure if those voice recognition things still do or not. They used tell you that you could say the command or press a number. Now they just say to tell it something. With a couple different ones I've tried pressing the corresponding number (pressing #2 for the second option listed) and it did absolutely nothing. I can't stand the things myself, so I can hardly imagine what she must go through with em.

The voice tech definitely needs significant improvement. I've found the iPhone 3GS voice recognition to be superb, but every other thing I've tried is disastrous.

"...Say 5 for the Sales office..."
"Five."
"Did you say 'nine'?"
"No."
"...Say 5 for the Sales office..."
"Five."
"Did you say 'nine'?"
"NO!"
"...Say 5 for the Sales office..."
Okay, I'll just go with 9 and have them redirect me.
"Nine."
"Did you say 'five'?"
"Grrrr..."

I bet the people who design that stuff get big laughs over it...

I think the problem is that in the US they are often calibrated for a mid-west accent, which is considered to be "standard" American English. So, people in any other region, are going to have trouble. Especially those of us in the south and northeast.

Petey7 said:

I think the problem is that in the US they are often calibrated for a mid-west accent, which is considered to be "standard" American English. So, people in any other region, are going to have trouble. Especially those of us in the south and northeast.

That could definitely be part of it. Or worse, it's calibrated to a specific person's voice that programmed it, and it isn't going to behave properly with anyone if their voice isn't similar.