diff --git a/requirements/python b/requirements/python
index 2a281b54..a612afb0 100644
--- a/requirements/python
+++ b/requirements/python
@@ -1,16 +1,16 @@
 # This file contains all python dependencies that are required by the textract
 # package in order for it to properly work.
 
-argcomplete==1.8.2
-chardet==3.0.4
-python-pptx==0.6.6
+argcomplete>=1.9.4
+chardet>=3.0.4
+python-pptx>=0.6.10
 #pdfminer.six <-- go back to this after the shebang fix is released (see https://github.com/goulu/pdfminer/issues/27)
 https://github.com/goulu/pdfminer/zipball/e6ad15af79a26c31f4e384d8427b375c93b03533#egg=pdfminer.six
-docx2txt==0.6
-beautifulsoup4==4.6.0
-xlrd==1.0.0
-EbookLib==0.16
-SpeechRecognition==3.7.1
+docx2txt>=0.7
+beautifulsoup4>=4.6.0
+xlrd>=1.1.0
+EbookLib>=0.17
+SpeechRecognition>=3.8.1
 https://github.com/mattgwwalker/msg-extractor/zipball/master
-six==1.10.0
-pocketsphinx==0.1.3
+six>=1.11.0
+#pocketsphinx  # keeps failing: pulse/pulseaudio.h: No such file or directory