But there are also a couple other items you may wish to address:

When menu transitions on your computer are set to fade, they can sometimes cause issues with Dragon. To turn off fade transitions, go to: Control Panel> All Control Panel Items> Performance Information and Tools> Advanced Tools, and then click on Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows.  Uncheck any attribute options that begin with “Fade…”.  Click Apply and then OK.

You may also wish to turn off Active Accessibility in Dragon.  On the DragonBar, click Tools> Options> Miscellaneous and then uncheck “Voice enable menus and dialog controls“. Click Apply and then OK.

And finally, be mindful of Java and other applets that may disrupt Dragon’s functionality within IE.  Contact Speakeasy Solutions for workarounds to your various issues.

The above tips and information will be particularly useful to Dragon Medical users who have deployed an EMR (electronic medical record) solution that utilizes a web browser (i.e. Med Access, Plexia etc.).

Intermittent issues are the most difficult to track down, however, knowing that an issue exists is half the battle, and removes the need for you to wonder: “What did I do wrong?”. It’s not you… it’s IE and Dragon.

Even if an issue is determined, the next step is finding a resolution.  If there is no resolution, then a workaround must be conceived and used.  Such is the case with IE and Dragon.

Symptoms of IE and Dragon’s marital spat include:

• Loss of Select-and-Say in IE (the ability to select and correct text dictated into a text field),
• Loss of the ability to click on links by voice, and
• Loss of the ability to use IE specific commands such as “link” and “image”.

The bottom line? Dragon stops working in IE. Why?  Dragon forgets where it is; in other words, it no longer has IE registered as the active window so it has no reason to access any features with respect to IE.

The solution?

1. If you are a Speakeasy Solutions client who has purchased a speech recognition package, you will have a useful little command in your arsenal called “fix focus”.  “Fix focus” will fix Dragon’s focus, returning it to the window you know to be active (in this case, IE).  You should have full select-and-say as well as the IE commands once more at your disposal.
2. If you are not a client of Speakeasy Solutions, you can shift your computer’s active window focus to another window, and then back to IE.  Pressing < Alt > + < Tab > twice would work well if you have two windows open (including IE).

Is the above solution a permanent fix?  Sadly, no.  Depending on a host of factors, you may never need to resort to the above, or you may find yourself saying “fix focus” every few minutes.

At least you know it’s not anything that you are doing.  Good luck.