How to activate and use Voice Dictation via the iPad and iPhone onscreen keyboard

by Greg O'Connor April 3, 2012
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 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

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About Greg O'Connor

Greg has been actively involved in supporting the learning of people with diverse learning needs for over 30 years. During this time he has worked as a classroom teacher, school executive, district consultant and regional manager with the New South Wales Department of Education and Training, Australia. Greg’s areas of interest and expertise include supporting people with complex needs, challenging behaviours and autism, and literacy support technologies for people with diverse learning needs. He is passionately committed to the use of inclusive and instructional technologies to support the learning of ALL students in school and post school settings. Greg presents at national and international conferences, provides training and consultancy across Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia, is currently a committee member of NSW Australian Association of Special Education, and is the Professional and Consultancy Services Manager at Spectronics.

4 Responses to How to activate and use Voice Dictation via the iPad and iPhone onscreen keyboard

  1. Cindy says:

    Hi, I just purchased from itunes this app: Voice Dictation – Voice To SMS, Email, Facebook, Twitter And Other Apps
    By AppSimo

    My purpose is to transcribe voice memos from my iphone into text.

    Can you tell me how to do this?

    Thank you!

    Cindy

    June 10, 2012 at 6:14 am
    Reply
  2. Rachel says:

    Greg, I’ve tried looking to turn the dictation on for my iPhone 4s and it is not coming up as an option. It has the latest version update so can you give me any more advice?

    July 1, 2012 at 7:45 pm
    Reply
  3. Joe Bloe says:

    Siri has to be enabled to see this option. It’s disabled by default.

    May 19, 2013 at 1:07 pm
    Reply

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