Is there a "VoiceAttack" for dummies?

[Worthywoman]

Yes, I am a very new user. (So new that I've only downloaded, not installed the software. I haven't even read any documentation yet.)

So… What are the first five things I should do to learn how to use this? Has anyone written a "VA for Dummies" book yet?

My "down the road" goal is to be able to write Unity https://unity3d.com/ software using my voice. (Quadriplegic due to Spinal Muscular Atrophy…)

Thanks for your time, Lisa

[Pfeil]

Aside from running the speech training, there aren't any steps per-se to get VoiceAttack working, in the sense that it'll respond to your voice. Setting up basic commands to press keys should be simple enough as well.

As with any piece of software, you can learn by doing through exploring the UI. There is a documentation file that comes with the installation that provides more information about individual options.


Getting VoiceAttack to control Unity should be possible for a number of functions. It's up to you which and how many features you implement, but basic text input for often-used snippets is of course an option.
VoiceAttack does support C# for plugins and inline functions, as does Unity, so knowledge gained from one could transfer to the other for more complex functionality.

[Antaniserse]

One thing worth mentioning is that, while capable of doing also dictation in the proper sense, VA main goal is to respond to *known* words/phrases in a custom grammar you create with each profile.

This means that it doesn't really matter if it gets every spoken word 100%, as long as your actions are built in such a way that he can "guess" the right ones.
So, to make a practical example, if you realize (looking at the log) that it often gets 'lock' when you meant to say 'look', simply add both options to your desired commands, at it will fire anyway.
Also, while using single words commands may seems faster, using two short words is much more reliable, since the "guessing" part done by the speech engine works better: using 'go look' instead of 'look' usually gives much more consistent results.

Now, since your goal is using a programming tool, inevitably there is gonna be much more work involved, since you are not just firing up buttons and menus and shortcuts, but also many "freeform" textual inputs in code... you are probably gonna have to prepare a good number of code snippets beforehand, and devise some sort of standard (typically by using the prefix/suffix feature of VA, very powerfull) to group them into your own preferred logic

This is an interesting example, it illustrates a different software than VA but it still applies the same concepts and might give you some starting ideas... pretty sure however that it took him quite some time to have everything in place