[whatwg] Web API for speech recognition and synthesis

[Olli Pettay]

Indeed the API should be something significantly simpler than X+V.
Microsoft has (had?) support for SALT. That API is pretty simple and
provides speech recognition and TTS.
The API could be probably even simpler than SALT.
IIRC, there was an extension for Firefox to support SALT (well, there 
was also an extension to support X+V).

If the platform/OS provides ASR and TTS, adding a JS API for it should
be pretty simple. X+V tries to handle some logic using VoiceXML FIA, but
I think it would be more web-like to give pure JS API (similar to SALT).
Integrating visual and voice input could be done in scripts. I'd assume
there would be some script libraries to handle multimodal input 
integration - especially if there will be touch and gestures events too 
etc. (Classic multimodal map applications will become possible in web.)

But this all is something which should be possibly designed in or with 
W3C multimodal working group. I know their current architecture is way 
more complex, but X+X, SALT and even Multimodal-CSS has been discussed 
in that working group.


-Olli



On 12/3/09 2:50 AM, Dave Burke wrote:
> We're envisaging a simpler programmatic API that looks familiar to the
> modern Web developer but one which avoids the legacy of dialog system
> languages.
>
> Dave
>
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 7:25 PM, João Eiras <joaoe at opera.com
> <mailto:joaoe at opera.com>> wrote:
>
>     On Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:32:07 +0100, Bjorn Bringert
>     <bringert at google.com <mailto:bringert at google.com>> wrote:
>
>         We've been watching our colleagues build native apps that use speech
>         recognition and speech synthesis, and would like to have JavaScript
>         APIs that let us do the same in web apps. We are thinking about
>         creating a lightweight and implementation-independent API that lets
>         web apps use speech services. Is anyone else interested in that?
>
>         Bjorn Bringert, David Singleton, Gummi Hafsteinsson
>
>
>     This exists already, but only Opera supports it, although there are
>     problems with the library we use for speech recognition.
>
>     http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml+voice/
>     http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/add-voice-interactivity-to-your-site/
>
>     Would be nice to revive that specification and get vendor buy-in.
>
>
>
>     --
>
>     João Eiras
>     Core Developer, Opera Software ASA, http://www.opera.com/
>
>