Lynn,
First, I'm sorry but we do not have a "program" called spk2wrt. That is our
mnemonic name for our 3-year study of the use of speech recognition among pre-
college age students. Our interest for the study is also primarily in kids
with LDs, but we have one student with CP and I have trained many others.
Students / individuals with CP have varying success with speech recognition,
depending on severity of dysarthria and their own personal ability to
pronounce words consistently (which seems somehow not completely the same),
and their interest in academics and using technology. Most people with CP who
can use speech recognition do best with discrete speech (pronouncing one word
at time), which means DragonDictate for Windows. You should arrange to get a
trial from a knowledgeable reseller or an assistive technology center (get in
touch with your state's assistive technology project to locate a center).
As someone else suggested, word prediction might be an excellent alternative,
and possibly the only alternative if speech doesn't work. Look at CoWriter
(Don Johnston) or KeyRep (Prentke Romich) as two good examples.
Finally, one last note: I'm not aware of any successful uses of this
technology (i.e., word prediction or speech recognition) for significant note-
taking, which is far too demanding in terms of paying both visual and auditory
attention and making decisions about what to note down, what to skip, etc.
Better to have some backup strategy, such as an in-class expert note-taker
hired by the SPED department from whom notes are available (many colleges and
some HSs are now using this strategy) or voice-actuated tape recording.
Good luck.
Bob
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