The present invention provides a speech recognition system combined with one or more alternate input modalities to ensure efficient and accurate text input. The speech recognition system achieves less than perfect accuracy due to limited processing power, environmental noise, and/or natural variations in speaking style. The alternate input modalities use disambiguation or recognition engines to compensate for reduced keyboards, sloppy input, and/or natural variations in writing style. The ambiguity remaining in the speech recognition process is mostly orthogonal to the ambiguity inherent in the alternate input modality, such that the combination of the two modalities resolves the recognition errors efficiently and accurately. The invention is especially well suited for mobile devices with limited space for keyboards or touch-screen input.