Hi all, I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of this before I went to a few other people. Especially since visually impaired folk I imagine are some of the top users of this accessibility tech.

My boyfriend and I are both sighted, but recently he discovered the dictation feature on his laptop. This revolutionized things for him— as he suffers from chronic pain in his hands/arms, as well as simply finding communication easier as an autistic person without having to text it.

Problem is, he also struggles with OCD which manifests in paranoia and delusions. One of the most prevalent for the past several years have been surveillance-based. The idea that someone is listening or watching him through his personal devices.

Obviously, there’s a bit of a difficult balance to strike here. If he wants to use dictation, he’ll have to reckon with the fact that his computer will, quite literally be “always listening to him”. Validating the delusion in ways not done before.

We both think that a good solution to this (before he’s able to hopefully work past it in therapy, of course) is a dictation machine that connects outside of the computer. So that it can be unplugged or turned off when not in use. We’re particularly interested in ones that work with Mac OS, since that’s the computer we both have. But his is pretty old at this point, so if a Microsoft OS is better, we can switch.

Someone on another sub recommended the Phillips Speechmic, it seems good. But very expensive for us poor, soon-to-be university students. Products over 250$ aren’t out of the question if they’re an honest good investment in his comfort. But I thought I’d ask here last in case anyone has any really good, cheaper suggestions.