[Athen] Speech-to-text solutions for student with Tourette Syndrome and Dysgraphia

[shelleyhaven techpotential.net]

Having worked with students who have Tourette Syndrome (TS), and being quite familiar with the disorder because it runs in my family, I have found that one invaluable tool for functional speech recognition is a headset microphone with a mute switch.  The vast majority of individuals with TS experience a so-called "premonitory urge" that immediately precedes the tic – a strong sensory phenomena of mounting inner tension which is subsequently relieved (albeit only temporarily) by the tic expression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premonitory_urge

Sensing the impending onset of a vocal tic, some students are able to click the mute switch, express the tic, then unmute and continue with dictation.  Premonitory urges often occur a couple of seconds to a fraction of a second before a vocal tic, but obviously this varies by individual.

Hope this helps,
- Shelley

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Shelley Haven  ATP, RET
Assistive Technology Consultant
www.TechPotential.net<http://www.TechPotential.net>
www.AT4LD.net



On SundayJul 31, at 11:17 AM, Romack, Justin <justinr at disability.tamu.edu<mailto:justinr at disability.tamu.edu>> wrote:

Howdy y’all!

I’m working with a student who has vocal ticks and wants to use speech-to-text dictation for longer writing assignments and essays (including use in our Testing Center).

While I did not personally observe these ticks, they note this happens often (especially later in the day). The student has been able to use speech-to-text on their Android tablet by making use of a filter words feature built into the tablet’s dictation function (they’ll just filter out words/phrases as they become ticks). I’m not opposed to exploring this option in our Testing Center if necessary, but also wanted to see if we could provide a solution on our machines as well. I did look through some documentation on Chrome OS to see if I could duplicate their approach on a Chromebook, but didn’t have much luck.

I’ve not looked super closely at the Windows/Mac built-in dictation tools, but couldn’t find anything in Dragon that would indicate a similar feature.

The student does note that their ticks are usually at a much higher frequency range than their speaking voice and that another solution they’ve found to work is the noise suppression in Discord. This student seemed very well-versed on the tools that had been helpful to them to this point… it’s just putting them all together in the academic space.

Curious if anyone has worked through a similar scenario and had advice or recommendations.

Grateful for this community!

Be well,
J

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Justin Romack  | Assistant Director
Disability Resources | Texas A&M University
1224 TAMU | College Station, TX 77843-1224

ph: 979.845.1637 | justinr at disability.tamu.edu<mailto:justinr at disability.tamu.edu> | disability.tamu.edu<http://disability.tamu.edu/>
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