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i have been asked for information concerning the use of a voice input / speech recognition system for (la)tex, for the benefit of a tetraplegic (quadriplegic) student who has no use of his limbs, and thus no means to use "ordinary" input devices. in this case, speech is not affected, nor is vision, so the input aspect is the focus of this question.

a similar question has been asked before: How can I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to write LaTeX math formulas by voice efficiently? however, that question (which is more limited in scope) has never received an answer. while some pointers in comments have led to interesting sources for speculation, it appears that there is nothing readily available at this time that could conveniently be adapted for such use. i'm hoping that the situation has changed since that question was asked (november 2013).

from time to time, there is a report in the news about communication mechanisms devised for individuals with disabilities of varying severity, but i am not familiar with any that refer to coded material, which is essential to the effective use of latex. any and all relevant information is welcome.

although a fully capable system, announced here, would be the ideal answer, if anyone has even partial information that they would rather not (yet) be announced publicly, i would welcome private communication; my e-mail address can be found in my profile.

this problem is the opposite of the usual accessibility question, which concerns the availability of voice output for individuals who can't see. i'm interested in that problem too; again, private communication to my e-mail address is welcome.

Community
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barbara beeton
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  • Mathematics is just going to be hard to process with natural language. Perhaps some sort of code could be set up, though. See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI – Sean Allred Sep 24 '14 at 18:36
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    "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" - HAL9000 (http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2014/09/01/when-will-we-start-talking-to-our-tvs/) – Steven B. Segletes Sep 24 '14 at 19:15
  • @SeanAllred -- thanks. the link you cite is the same one linked from the question i referenced. sadly, one of the comments states that the code never appeared; i was also unable to get any more useful information from the linked github site. regarding math, though, when i try to describe how math is input to tex to someone who has never heard of tex, i say it was designed to be very similar to how one mathematician would talk to another mathematician on the phone. maybe that analogy could be built on. – barbara beeton Sep 24 '14 at 19:15
  • Please see http://looknohands.me/ and the discussion at hn https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8805053 good luck with the search. – yannisl Dec 28 '14 at 14:05
  • @YiannisLazarides -- very interesting indeed. more to explore. – barbara beeton Dec 29 '14 at 18:50
  • yes this can be done. please see my answer here: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/145367/how-can-i-use-dragon-naturallyspeaking-to-write-latex-math-formulas-by-voice-eff/468489#468489 – 784347 Jan 10 '19 at 21:04

3 Answers3

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Apologies for only having found this question quite a bit after it was asked - but have you heard of MathTalk and Scientific Notebook? As a postgraduate mathematician with limited use of both arms, but with no other disabilities relevant to this discussion such as sight difficulties, I use them together with Dragon, and have since my undergraduate degree. SN is a maths text editor/word processor (and includes other calculator/solver abilities) that can output a TeX file* (if one that can need some after tweaking) as well as other document types, and MT is a voice add on that's compatible with Dragon and has a library of maths specific voice commands.

http://www.mathtalk.com/products.htm
http://www.mackichan.com/index.html?products/snb.html~mainFrame

*Be wary that for some reason the MacKichan website says SN doesn't typeset in LaTeX, but I have used mine to output a TeX document. It's not perfect - for example in my experience it defaults to using $maths$ a lot instead of \begin{equation} - and I've not yet used it for more advanced things, but I find it can be better than trying to voice it all from scratch with just Dragon.

Hope this helps! :)

Helen Fletcher
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  • Sorry for the very late comment, but just wondering if this is the approach that you use in 2023 (2024 now) if you still do this type of work (sorry pun unintended) – tom Jan 04 '24 at 11:59
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Just a partial answer, but since there is no other answer yet...

There is a free speech recognition software developed at RWTH Aachen University which has at least some XML output which could then be post-processed to be turned into LaTeX code: http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/rwth-asr/

It might also be a good idea to ask these people directly about your needs - since it is their research, they might be happy about (more) actual use cases.

cryingshadow
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Probably this YouTube video about voice coding might give you some inspiration. The author of this video, Tavis Rudd, also gives this link in the comments: https://github.com/dictation-toolbox.

pantlmn
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