Sighs and Hallelujahs Stories and thoughts about the adventures of life without arms

Toe-Typing Tipping Point

This may be the last blog post I ever type. I've had enough.

Enough of typing, that is. At age 33, I recognize that my feet and legs could use a rest from typing and that there is software out there that can type everything I speak at lightening-fast speeds. Certainly more lightening-fast than my 31 words per minute typing ability.

So, this weekend I decided to invest in Dragon Dictate (for Mac, of course), voice recognition software that will allow me to speak into a microphone and my computer will do the rest. At a cost of only a couple hundred bucks, it makes me wonder why I waited so long to buy it. It might have been a bit helpful in composing grad school papers over the past seven years!

This is not my first endeavor into Dragon Dictate land. It's just that my first foray into voice recognition software was well over ten years ago, when the technology lagged the brilliance of the concept. At that point I became frustrated by the hours of training required as the software learned my specific dialect. And its inability to keep up and to produce the correct words were enough to make me go back to typing with my feet.

I can only imagine how many words I've typed with my toes over the years. High school, undergrad, graduate school. There is a lot of written work represented in those years. And, the fact is that I primarily type with my right foot, limiting my left foot to holding the Shift button or infrequently hitting the Space bar. Throughout the years I've had tarsal tunnel syndrome (think carpal tunnel in the ankle) and many cramps in my right foot. It makes me wonder what a little patience and humility mighty have led to a decade ago.

The fact of the matter is that the technology wasn't the only thing lacking as I experimented with this software years ago. Humility was lagging as well. There is something humiliating about admitting that assistive devices will make things better. "I can do it on my own," is a phrase that many of you have probably heard me say throughout the years. That is true, most of the time. But, maturity eventually led me to the place where I realize that help is not a bad thing -- whether from a human or a piece of computer software.

Plus, this becomes an important building block for me in my ability to write more. Not only is speaking a much easier task for me than typing, but the potential time savings could be extraordinary. The prospect of writing hundreds of pages for a future book feels much more within grasp with this new software.

I'm not too sure why this weekend was my tipping point in deciding to give voice recognition software another try. But, it was -- and I'm excited to see what relief this software can offer to my tired toes. Malcolm Gladwell defines a tipping point as "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point," and my toes reached that point this weekend. You might just call it a toe-typing tipping point.

Looking forward to talking to you next week!