IOS – Will voice dictation work on iPad 2

The following conditions must be met in order for dictation to work:

• You must be connected to the Internet for dictation to work.
• You shouldn't be using audio on your device (e.g. if you are on a FaceTime call, the button will not appear.)
• You must be focused in an text field which is formatted for normal text (more about this below.)

Developers (and even Web Developers) can choose which keyboard layout will be visible to the user, via the UIKeyboardType property. Here's an example of several different keyboard layouts and what they look like on an iPhone (without dictation).

The dictation button is available in the following keyboard types:

• Standard (UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable)

But is not available in the following:

• Telephone (UIKeyboardTypePhonePad)
• URL (UIKeyboardTypeURL)
• Email (UIKeyboardTypeEmailAddress)
• Zipcode (UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad)

Yes.

With many methods of voice dictation, what happens is that your voice is recorded and digitized, and your speech is broken up into phrases which are uploaded over the Internet to a powerful computer server which translates your speech into text and then transmits the text back to your device.

However, there is a long history of programs for Mac and PC which perform voice dictation and transcription entirely on your Mac or PC without using an Internet connection.

I don't know of any apps for iOS that perform voice transcription entirely on the device without using a connection to a server on the Internet.