Voice Browser Activity Proposal
The rationale for W3C to set up a Voice Browser activity is
covered in the mission
statement of the charter.
W3C held a workshop on "Voice Browsers" in
October 1998. The workshop brought together people involved in
developing voice browsers for accessing Web based services. The
workshop concluded that the time was ripe for W3C to bring
together interested parties to collaborate on the development of
joint specifications for voice browsers, particularly since these
efforts concern subsetting or extending some of the core W3C
technologies, for example HTML and CSS. As a response, this
briefing package proposes to establish a W3C working group for
"Voice Browsers" .
The working group will have the mission:
- To prepare and review documents related to Voice Browers, for
instance, relating to dialog management, extensions to existing
Web standards, speech grammar formats and authoring guidelines.
- To serve as a coordination body with existing industry groups
working on related specifications.
- To serve as a pool of experts on Voice Browsers, some of which
will participate in the other W3C working groups relevant to Voice
Browsers.
An associated public mailing list (www-voice@w3.org) is
proposed for public review of proposals prepared by the working
group. A public web page will be provided
(http://www.w3.org/Voice) describing the status of the activity,
with a link to an archive of the public email list. Access to the
private email list for the working group and its associated web
page will be limited to W3C members and invited experts.
Answers to questions
concerning a new activity in the process document:
- What is the market within the area of the proposal? Who or
what group wants this (providers, users, etc.)?
- This working group is targeting technology providers and
content providers, as well as other standardization organisations
that are working on issues relevant to Voice Browsers.
- What community will benefit from this activity?
- The Web currently reaches only a small fraction of the
population. Widespread access to telephones and the low cost of
typical consumer electronic devices when coupled with Voice Browser
technology promises to broaden access to Web based services to many
more people as well as giving them access at any time of the day or
night, from any where they are.
- Are members of this community part of W3C now?
- W3C has many members that are interested in Voice Browsers as
shown by the list of
participants at the "Voice Browser" Workshop. The voice
technology industry, however, is slightly under-represented in the
W3C membership. The industry generally perceives the biggest
markets to be in more direct application of speech technology for
call centers and hands-free mobile applications (see for example,
the DARPA Communicator
project). Voice browsing is often perceived as a poor interface
to the web, even though voice browsers are already in widespread
use (e.g. webspeak and emacspeak). The industry is
now awakening to the realization that voice browser technology is a
great fit for call center dialog systems, whether accessed via the
Internet or via the telephone network.
- Will they join the effort?
- It is very likely that other companies will follow, especially
if W3C becomes more active in work on Voice Browsers, and as the
application to call centers and mobile devices becomes more
apparent. Establishing the Voice Browser working group is a first
step in this direction.
- Who or what currently exists in the market?
- Voice-based software for accessing email, voice mail, diaries,
information services, e.g. for travel, resource tracking, financial
news, weather and traffic updates, directories etc. as well as
commerical voice browers that allow you to access the Web at large.
These are accessable via fixed-line telephones, cellphones and
dedicated appliances, for instance in automobiles. Voice enhanced
Desktop Web browsers for people who need an alternative to the
keyboard and mouse. Talking Books for people with vision
impairments.
- Is the market mature/growing/developing a niche?
- The market is currently a niche, but predicted to grow very
rapidly. Speech synthesis and recognition is a mature field with
many years of experience.
- What competing technologies exist?
- Touch tone (DTMF) driven voice menus have been around for a long
time, but speech recognition offers a more modern and better alternative
for controlling voice browsers. Speech synthesisers exhibit a number of
differences in the ways they can be driven, which may impede the
development of standards. A number of specifications exist for speech
grammars, text to speech and dialog management, which provide a pool of
experience for developing open standards, either by extending existing
Web formats or as specialized delivery formats. Some of the relevant
specifications include the Java Speech Grammar
Format, SABLE, SpeechML, and
VoxML. Discussion in the Working
Group on the needs and opportunities for voice applications is expected
to shed light as to whether specialized formats are needed for
applications developed specifically for voice interaction, or whether
extensions to existing Web formats offer a better solution.
- What competing organizations exist?
- See the section on "Coordination with External
Groups" in the Charter. One of the explicit goals of the
Working Group is to avoid competition between these organisations
when it comes to issues relating to Voice Browsers.
- What Team resources will be consumed (technical and
administrative)?
- See the section on "W3C Resource
Commitment" below.
- What is the scope of the work?
- See the section on "Scope
and Deliverables" in the Charter.
- What are initial timetables?
- See the section on "Milestones" in the
Charter.
- Is there a window of opportunity that cannot be
missed?
- Yes. Vendors are accelerating their product development plans
for Voice Browsers, and unless, W3C moves quickly, there is a
serious risk of incompatible proprietary systems fragmenting the
market within the next 6 to 12 months.
- What intellectual property (for example, an implementation)
must be available for licensing and is this intellectual property
available for a reasonable fee and in a non-discriminatory
manner?
- See the section on "Intellectual Property"
below.
- How should they be coordinated?
- This work will be coordinated with related W3C activities,
including work on mobile access, HTML, style sheets,
internationalization, accessibility and synchronized multimedia.
See section "Relationship with other W3C Activities" in Charter.
This working group starts a new activity on "Voice Browsers"
within W3C. This activity will be part of the User Interface domain.
See "Voice Browser" working
group charter
4.2.1 W3C resource commitment
The working group will be chaired by Professort Tomasz Imielinski
of Rutgers University. The W3C staff contact will be Dave Raggett,
and it is expected that the "Voice Browser" WG will take up about 20% of his time. Dave is
funded by Hewlett Packard, but additional W3C staff resources will
be needed on an occasional basis, e.g. for organizing meetings.
4.2.2 Member resource commitment
Each member organization choosing to participate in the Working
Group is expected to identify one or more individuals who will
contribute to the Group discussions, produce deliverables as agreed
by the Working Group, and attend face-to-face meetings as
scheduled by the Chair of the Working Group. Working Group members
are expected to devote up to 10 - 20% of their time to the group.
W3C promotes an open working environment. Whenever possible,
technical decisions should be made unencumbered by intellectual
property right (IPR) claims. W3C's policy for intellectual property
is set out in
section 1.5 of the W3C Process document.
Members of the Voice Browser Working Group are expected to
disclose any intellectual property they have in this area. Any
intellectual property brought into this Activity must be at least
available for licensing for a reasonable fee and in a
non-discriminatory manner. More stringent requirements are at the
discretion of the Director of W3C.
Members disclose patent and other IPR claims by sending email to
an archived mailing list that is readable by Members and the Team:
patent-issues@w3.org. Members must disclose all IPR claims to
this mailing list but they may also copy other recipients.
Dave Raggett
<dsr@w3.org>,
W3C $Date: 1999/02/09
14:03:08 $