Vlingo allows you to control your phone using only your voice. You can the app to call, send SMS and emails, and even perform Google searches, simply by speaking into it.
Using Vlingo couldn't be simpler. You just touch the Tap & Speak button and speak your command. The program comes with a guide of the kind of things you can say. For instance, you can say "Call" then speak the name of the contact, use the word "Find" to look something up on Google, and even update Twitter and Facebook vocally.
The speech recognition in Vlingo is pretty good, and it managed to pick up most of what we said during our tests. It doesn't matter too much if the matching isn't perfect because you are able to edit dictated messages before sending them.
It would be nice if the iPhone version of Vlingo came with the same InCar mode that's in the Android version, which allows you to control your phone safely while driving, without using your hands. The Android version of Vlingo also a SafeReader tool, which will speak SMS and email messages to you. It's a shame the iPhone version is lacking these tools, as they help to make Vlingo a useful program for people with sight or motor impairments, making the phone much more accessible to them.
Vlingo is an impressive app, and with a few more features bit more fine-tuning from the developer, it could become an essential accessibility tool for iOS.
