Add dictation search support

[meganrogge]

Many modern browsers/applications offer the ability to search via dictation. It would be nice if we supported this in VS Code's command palette and potentially other search input areas.

[meganrogge]

@TylerLeonhardt any thoughts?

[adiabatic]

What sort of people is this feature for, and could they be better served by directing engineer time elsewhere?

Microphone buttons on search boxes make at least some sense because there are all sorts of things one might want to search for yet be unable to spell.

With a program like Visual Studio Code, though, why would someone who needs voice recognition use VS Code's own feature instead of the operating system's voice-control system, or a systemwide add-on like Dragon?

[meganrogge]

This request would benefit those who do not have or want to use an operating system's voice control system.

It would supplement the experience of those who do use those

[TylerLeonhardt]

@meganrogge I noticed you marked this as an accessibility feature. I imagine such a feature would be helpful for users who maybe struggle with keyboard input?

The problem I see is that VS Code's editing experience is heavily keyboard driven. A user has to type code or whatever in the editor.

The alternative as @adiabatic pointed out is a system-wide/os-wide voice to text feature for which someone who does struggle with keyboard input likely has turned on and this would be a solution not only for the editor but also command palette and search features of vscode.

The Google example is a good one, but I think the difference is that Google can be entirely mouse driven:

• click the mic
• speak your query
• click a link you want to open

Something that VS Code can't really align with... so I'm not sure there's enough commonality in those two examples.

I could see this feature be for folks that don't want to use the keyboard and feel like speaking instead... but I'd like to hear if there are enough users in that camp before working on this because I am skeptical as a user who doesn't like voice to text inputs.

[mrob95]

Hi all,

I program in VS code full-time using only dictation software (no keyboard). There's a small but dedicated community of voice-coders, mostly developers and students with some form of disability (often RSI, in my case a spinal cord injury).

I don't think this feature would be worth the effort required to implement it and I personally wouldn't use it. The reason is that, as @adiabatic identified, people who are serious about using voice rec in place of a mouse and keyboard have solutions that are systemwide and can issue input to all apps. This makes a lot more sense than having every app provide its own dictation support - even if every app did it, trying to keep track of the quirks and limitations of all the different implementations would be a nightmare.

It's awesome to see dictation support noted as a potential accessibility issue though. There is an active community of people working on improving the VSCode voice coding experience with extensions like https://github.com/cursorless-dev/cursorless. As far as I know the biggest pain point that can't be fixed through extensions is still #97790 / #117980. Any movement on that would be very much appreciated.

-Mike

cc @pokey

[meganrogge]

Thanks for all of the input. I'll close this issue in favor of the others cited as being more useful