I’m just playing with some ideas here regarding a carpal tunnel syndrome-friendly way to do everyday computing.

Given the limits that nature places on the number of possible ways of manipulating machines, at the current time it seems voice dictation is the only feasible alternative to typing and pointing and clicking. Is it possible to do what I usually do at my computer using 100% voice dictation?

I wouldn’t use it for gaming, of course, but for things like web browsing, coding, writing/typing, and system administration tasks. I would need software, preferrably FOSS, that responds to voice commands.

Web browsing

Voice commands for web browsing would have to include something like the following:

• “Scroll N pixels down the page”
• “Refresh the page”
• “Go to tab 6”
• “Download the file at link 8”
• “Go to www.duckduckgo.com”
• “Open up the Bitwarden menu”
• “Enter writing mode and compose a new Mastodon post”
• “Enter writing mode and compose a reply to Mastodon timeline item 23”
• “Play the video on Mastodon timeline item 28”
• “Go to bookmark 16”
• “Copy the URL to the system clipboard”

So there would have to be a way to enumerate web page and browser elements. This enumeration concept would also apply to many other apps.

Coding and command line usage

Voice commands that are mapped to:

• shell commands and aliases
• code snippets
  • “Create a Go function named helloWorld”
  • “helloWorld takes a string parameter named foo”
• Okay, I’ve realized coding is probably not feasible using 100% voice dictation.