Will this app work after fall 2024?

[Shinken]

I've read that Microsoft is ripping out the Windows Speech Recognition software out of Windows 11 versions coming out after September 2024 and replace it with the new "Voice Access" feature.

As VoiceAttack seems to rely on WSR, how's the plan for this?

Support the new Voice Access feature?
Use alternative speech recognition software?
End support for newer Windows 11 versions after fall 2024?

[gmagenheimer]

Hi, Shinken

What I am currently assuming is meant by Microsoft's statement (link here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/use-voice-access-to-control-your-pc-author-text-with-your-voice-4dcd23ee-f1b9-4fd1-bacc-862ab611f55d ) is that they are removing the old Windows Speech Recognition app and replacing it with the new Voice Access app.

I make that assumption as the 'System.Speech' namespace is still available in .NET 8 (released just last November, with 3-year support), so it would seem rather disruptive of Microsoft to include that namespace in such a current framework only to have it suddenly become non-functional for everybody by pulling out all of the components that it relies on (not to mention causing countless applications written over the years that also rely on those services to become completely broken all at once with no way to recover, short of using older versions of Windows).

That said, in the event that Microsoft does indeed plan to remove all of the current built-in speech recognition facilities, VoiceAttack currently allows for the use of Speech Platform 11 speech engines (separately installable), which are actually quite good for this context (and have a lot more languages to choose from with the drawback being that dictation services would no longer be available (not sure if anybody even uses that in VoiceAttack, although including some type of online service(s) within VoiceAttack could fill this gap in some way)).

On a side note, I do have multiple inquiries going on through Microsoft about clarifying their statement, including an inquiry to their accessibility team. Once I have a solid idea of what is going on, I'll make sure to update this thread.

Thanks for the inquiry!

[gmagenheimer]

Hi, Shinken

I received confirmation from my contact at Microsoft that only the Windows Speech Recognition application itself will be replaced, and not the underlying APIs that handle speech recognition.

Hope that helps!

[Shinken]

That's awesome and reassuring! Thanks for the detailed reply!

[Leo Surrell]

Whatever windows 10 update installed just broke my Voice Attack, "An error has occurred while trying to initialize the speech engines audio event handlers." there's more but it was titled windows speech recognition engine error and I've been trying to find a fix sense yesterday..which led me here so far.

[Pfeil]

That would be unrelated to what this topic is about.

I'd recommend posting about your issue here: https://voiceattack.com/discord

[York Lord]

Voice access doesn't seem to have trainer functionality. Is there anything that can be done to replicate it?

[Lenko]

Originally posted by Leo Surrell:

Whatever windows 10 update installed just broke my Voice Attack, "An error has occurred while trying to initialize the speech engines audio event handlers." there's more but it was titled windows speech recognition engine error and I've been trying to find a fix sense yesterday..which led me here so far.

Did you find a fix for this? I have the standalone version and the steam version and neither launch, due to this error.

[gmagenheimer]

Originally posted by Lenko:

Did you find a fix for this? I have the standalone version and the steam version and neither launch, due to this error.

Somehow I missed this until just now, @Lenko. Were you able to find a solution or are you still having trouble?

This error generally means that the speech recognition provided by Windows is either not installed properly or not installed at all. If you are still having trouble, come on by the VoiceAttack Discord, as troubleshooting a person's system down here in discussions is often not very fruitful (as you can see - I didn't even know it was here). https://voiceattack.com/discord