Voice Input

Voice Input lets respondents answer open-ended text questions by speaking instead of typing. A microphone button appears on open-ended text fields, and the spoken response is converted to text in real time. Respondents can review and edit the text before submitting, just like a typed answer.

Voice Input is enabled by default on all surveys. Password fields are excluded.

Respondents click the microphone button on an open-ended text field. The first time, their browser asks for microphone permission. Once granted, they can start speaking and the text appears in the field as they talk. On desktop, a live waveform shows that the microphone is picking up sound.

Dictation stops when the respondent clicks the stop button or after about 10 seconds of silence. Respondents can click the microphone again to continue adding to their answer.

Voice Input uses the speech recognition built into the respondent's browser. It works on Google Chrome and most Chromium-based browsers, Microsoft Edge, and Safari on macOS and iOS. Browsers without built-in speech recognition, such as Firefox, show a disabled microphone button, and respondents can type their answer as usual.

The recognition language is set automatically from the survey's language and, where possible, matched to the respondent's regional variant based on their browser settings (for example, English may be recognized as English – India). Available languages depend on the respondent's browser, as each browser vendor maintains its own list. If a language is not supported, the respondent can still type their answer.

To turn off Voice Input for a survey, go to Edit » Workspace » Layout Settings and enable Disable Voice Dictation. The microphone button will no longer appear for respondents of that survey.

QuestionPro does not record, receive, or store any audio. Speech is converted to text by the respondent's browser, and only the resulting text is sent to QuestionPro. That text is stored exactly like a typed answer, under the same retention and deletion rules. QuestionPro does not record whether an answer was dictated or typed.

QuestionPro does not use any additional subprocessor for this feature. However, depending on the browser, the browser vendor may process the audio to perform speech recognition: Google for Chrome, Apple for Safari (on-device or on Apple's servers, depending on OS version and language), and Microsoft for Edge. This processing takes place between the respondent and their browser vendor under the vendor's terms.

• If the microphone button is greyed out, the browser does not support speech recognition. Switching to Chrome, Edge, or Safari will resolve this.
• If microphone access was denied, respondents should click the padlock icon in the browser's address bar and set microphone permission to "Allow", then refresh the page.
• If no text appears while speaking, respondents should check that the correct microphone is selected in their device settings and that it is not muted.
• If the microphone button does not appear at all, Voice Input may be disabled for the survey in Navigation Settings.