Send emails using your voice
VOICE RECOGNITION is improving every year and getting cheaper too. A decade ago, if you wanted to talk to your computer rather than type, you’d have had to spend several hundred dollars on special dictation software. This would intercept everything you said, translate it into characters, and send it on to whichever program you were using. But things have changed considerably since then. Now, you can dictate directly into a Google Docs document using ‘Voice typing’ if you’re logged in through Chrome. To enable it, click Tools at the top of a document, followed by ‘Voice typing’, then click the on-screen microphone and start talking.
Tools such as voice typing are a considerable time-saver if you’re working on a lengthy document, but what if you’re a slow typist who just wants to send a few emails and text messages? You can’t do that in Google Docs unless you attach the document to a message using the File menu’s Email section, which is probably overkill.
There’s good news, though. Those improvements to voice recognition don’t rely entirely on the power of an online office suite like Google Docs. In many cases, similar features are built into the operating system you use on your computer or phone, so you can use voice typing for a far more diverse range of tasks, including sending emails and texts.
Here, we’ll explain how you can use your voice to send emails from a Windows PC, by taking advantage of their accessibility features. Many of these are easy to overlook if you don’t otherwise need assistance using a keyboard or mouse. –NIK RAWLINSON
1 SET UP SPEECH RECOGNITION IN WINDOWS
Speech recognition isn’t enabled by default. To turn it on in Windows 10 or 11, press Windows key+I to open Settings, then click ‘Time & Language’ followed by Speech. Now click the ‘Get started’ button in the Microphone section [ Image A].
» Windows will now run its troubleshooter to detect any problems with your microphone [ Image B]. If it spots any issues, click their entry and use the options that appear to try to remedy the problem.
» You then need to train the operating system to better recognize your voice. Start by pressing Windows key + Ctrl + S. The first time you do this, it will open the ‘Set up Speech Recognition’ tool (on subsequent presses, that keyboard combination will open speech recognition and wait for your spoken input). Click ‘Next’ on the first screen, and follow the instructions to train your computer to better understand what you are saying (see screenshot).
» Windows asks you what kind of microphone you’re using, giving you options for a headset mic, which it claims is the most suitable for voice recognition, a desktop mic, and ‘other’, which is the option we selected A because we’re using a Blue Yeti microphone which costs around $100.
» Click ‘Next’, follow Windows’ advice on how best to position your mic, then click Next again and read the sample sentence displayed on the screen.
» When you’ve finished, click Next twice, then choose whether to enable or disable document review by clicking the relevant button. Document review is a system where documents you’ve dictated are analyzed so the system can better understand how voice and text relate to one another, learn from what it discovers, and improve upon its performance.
» Click ‘Next’ again, then decide how you want to launch speech recognition. You have two options: manual or voice activation. If you select manual (which is the default), you can start speech recognition by pressing Windows key+Ctrl, or by clicking the onscreen microphone that hangs down from the top of the Windows interface, and stop it by saying “stop listening”. If you choose voice activation, you’ll use the same “stop listening” command to bring a session to a close, and can restart it by saying “start listening”.
» Click ‘Next’ until you reach the end of the instructions to complete set-up.
2 SEND AN EMAIL USING YOUR VOICE
Now that you’ve set up speech recognition in Windows, you can use it to control your PC and even send emails without using the keyboard or mouse.
» Enable speech recognition either by clicking the mic on the bar at the top of the screen or by saying “start listening” if you opted for voice activation. Now launch or switch to the program you want to use to send your email. If you’re using Windows’ builtin Mail program, for example, say “launch mail”. If it’s obvious to Windows what you said, Mail will start instantly, but if it has any doubts, it will display a window showing various possibilities. Speak the number next to Mail.
» In Mail, you create a new message by clicking the ‘+’ in the left-hand sidebar. If you’re wondering how you’ll manage that without touching the mouse, the answer is quite simple: say “show numbers”. This command, which works in any program, overlays clickable elements like the ‘+ New mail’ button with numbers ( see screenshot below). The numbers might be different every time you issue the command, even if you’re using the same program, so don’t just assume you know which one will be given to a particular command.
» In four separate tests, we saw the numbers 9, 15, 16, and 19 overlaying the ‘+ New mail’ button. Speak the number for the object you want to click, then say “OK”.
» With a new message open on the screen, the first thing you need to do is enter an email address. If you’re using Mail, the cursor will already be positioned in the To field, but if you’re using an alternative program, and the cursor is elsewhere, use the ‘show numbers’ command again, speak the number of the box that sits on top of the To field, then say “OK”.
» Now dictate the recipient’s email address. We found it easiest to do this by spelling it out character by character— for example, by saying “press n, press i, press k…”. Here, Mail displayed a list of matching email addresses with the one we wanted highlighted, so we said “press return” to select it.
» If this doesn’t work for you, and you need to spell out the whole of the email address, use “press at sign” for @, “press dot” for a full stop, and “press hyphen” for a dash. Check out Microsoft’s full list of speechrecognition commands on its support website.
» Having dictated the email address, say “tab” as many times as is necessary to move the cursor to the subject line, then dictate your subject, and use the tab command again to move to the body text area of your message.
» At this point, you’ve done the most difficult bit. You can sit back and chat to your computer as though you were dictating to a secretary, albeit one that requires you to be explicit about where full stops, commas, and other punctuation should appear. If you want a carriage return, say “new line”, and for a double carriage return, say “new paragraph”. Again, these commands are included in the Microsoft list provided at the URL above.
» As you’ll notice, it can take a lot less time to dictate a fairly lengthy email than it can to type it by hand, and once you get used to the idea of thinking on your feet, rather than pouring your ideas into a keyboard, you may find your language becomes more natural, too.
» When you reach the end of your message, sign off in the usual manner, then use ‘show numbers’ to overlay the on-screen buttons with digits. Speak whichever number sits on top of the send button, then say “OK”.