Hi readers,

in this section of the blog I wanted to explain a little bit more about assistive technology and artificial intelligence's use in this blog, for any of you who might be curious. Let's start with the basics, why am I using these two technologies anyways?

That's actually a genuine question for those of you who don't know me in real life, and I'm going to try my best to give you all a concise answer which is both truthful and illuminating.

I use voice activation software or speech to text software to get my thoughts down on paper, because my physical disability, cerebral palsy, makes it especially arduous for me to type by hand. If I were to type everything I want to say manually, it could take three or four weeks to write a simple blog post. Using voice activation comes with its own unique challenges, especially when it comes to proofreading. For example, I might want to say, that I scream when I get irritated, but my program may transcribe that sentence as, "ice cream when I get irritated. Mistranscriptions happen for a variety of reasons. My dictation program may not have enough context to correctly identify the word I'm trying to say. My voice also tends to trail off or get breathy at the end of sentences, which can also lead to a transcription error. Lastly, although I use the biggest vocabulary my dictation program has to offer, it may not recognize a word as a word, especially if that word is in a different language, old-fashioned, or a word not used by a majority of American English speakers, this is especially true for slang. My dictation program is not good at regional dialects, although sometimes I may use them.

This is where the second piece of assistive technology comes into play for me. My Cerebral Palsy, (CP for short,) also affects my vision, this is why I use a text-to-speech program that will read posts for the blog out loud to me before I post them. If I were to solely rely on my vision, trust me, there would be a lot more of the types of dictation errors I just mentioned. While I am pretty good at reading with my ears, when something is transferred into my text-to-speech program, I feel it only right to warn you that there may still be grammar and spelling errors that I cannot catch. If a sentence in one of my posts or pages seems wildly off to you, please let me know in the comments section, and I will try to reply back to you with a correction.

Now that we taking care of assistive technology, let's talk about the more controversial topic, artificial intelligence, and why I personally as a creator, use it in the creation of this blog.

For Me, I find that AI can be useful in helping me come up with sources related to a topic that I want to talk about. It should be noted that as of this posting, I only use artificial intelligence platforms such as GB T4, and replika, to gather sources that may be of use when writing. All sources/results generated by the AI platforms that use are double checked by me for accuracy and actual existence. I may also use AI as a proofreader, for grammar and spelling, in order to give my readers the best possible experience when consuming content on The Sanctum. It's always good to have an extra pair of eyes glance over your work, even if those eyes are virtual. (I am also not rich enough to afford a full-time secretary/proofreader, although this is a dream of mine.)

I appreciate your patience and understanding when it comes to my use of assistive technology, and artificial intelligence. I understand that these two features of the blog put some readers off. I can't force you to consume my content. What I can do, is be honest about my use of these technologies. It is my hope that the community members gathered here will see assistive and artificial intelligence technologies as useful tools to enhance everyone's experience on the blog.

Thanks for understanding,

Sorloquator