The onscreen keyboard on the iPhone 4S and iPad (3rd Generation) has a new feature, Voice Dictation. This will provide speech recognition capabilities integrated right there via the keyboard.
To activate this feature open the Settings app on the iPad or iPhone, select “General’, then select “Keyboards”. Here is a screen shot from the iPad.
The “Dictation” option needs to be turned on. Again, this is only available on the iPad (3rd Generation) and the iPhone 4S/5 running the latest version of iOS.
With this selected, the Voice Dictation microphone icon will now appear on a key next to the spacebar on the keyboard.
To use this feature:
1. Open a document in Notes, Pages etc and tap on the document to activate the keyboard.
2. Tap the Dictation key and dictate the text to be inserted in the document. When finished dictating, tap the Dictation key again and your text will appear in the document.
3. Repeat to include more text via Dictation.
If you are using speech recognition in the classroom, you may be interested in this blog posting – Speech Recognition Software: An Assistive Technology Solution for the Classroom
Note: As this option needs a lot of processing power on your device, ensure that any background running apps are closed, especially if the icon does not show up.
