Nuance Updates Its Swype Keyboard

Nuance Communications upgraded its voice-enabled Swype keyboard for Android smartphones and tablets with a number of new features and enhancements.

Swype's new features include the following:

• Continuous dictation: Swype now includes continuous phrase-based dictation, allowing users to see words and phrases appear on their screens as they speak. And users can select dictation languages separately from their keyboard languages; if a user likes to Swype in English but dictate in Spanish, he can now do so without having to switch keyboards.
• Bilingual support: Swype now features bilingual support for alphabetic languages that allows users to enter text in two selected languages, and words suggested by Swype will automatically adjust to the bilingual user's language preference. Swype's bilingual keyboard capabilities support more than 1,000 language combinations.
• Personalize your keyboard: Users can customize keyboards by deciding how big, small, wide, or tall they want them to be. Users can also choose their keyboard layouts, whether its QWERTY, QWERTZ, or AZERTY, depending on the language they speak.
• Support for new Indian keyboard languages, including Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, and Telugu.
• Swype Search Gesture, which allows users to type their text and Swype to S to instantly search the Web for the selected text.
• Accessibility: The Swype keyboard now supports Android's Talkback and Explore by Touch accessibility features. When accessibility features are enabled and the user inputs text on Swype, it will be spoken back to the user. Explore by Touch lets users navigate through the keyboard and hear each key spoken aloud. Swype also lets accessibility users make selections from the word choice list via a new Scrub gesture. Navigating up and outside the keyboard will activate this gesture. Once activated, the keyboard will highlight and announce the first word in the word choice list. A clockwise circular motion selects the next word while a counter-clockwise circular motion selects the previous word.

"Swype has always been first to market on innovation that creates intuitive and personalized typing experiences," said Aaron Sheedy, vice president of mobile solutions at Nuance Mobile, in a statement. "With these latest enhancements, Swype continues to be the only keyboard people will ever need for Android—fully customizable and available to take with you on any Android device now and in the future."