RE: Conversational / Natural Language Interfaces / Interactive agent accessibility wiki update

I support renaming the page and the text to refer to natural language interfaces.
Another potential advantage of natural language interfaces is efficiency: formulating a natural language sentence can be faster than searching a complex hierarchy of menus and dialogues. Word prediction can facilitate the entry of natural language even further if an on-screen keyboard or other, relatively slow input mechanism is used.
I would also claim that accessibility to people who are deaf or who have speech-related disabilities is of fundamental importance. It may be true at the moment that many of the tasks which can be performed via natural language interaction can also be carried out with a graphical user interface, but I doubt this is likely to remain the case. There is a parallel with graphical user interface accessibility in the 1980s and early 1990s, where it could have been argued at the time that all significant functionality was available from the command line, and hence the GUI need not be made accessible. Command line interfaces have evolved since the 1980s, as have graphical interfaces, and there are tasks that can be performed with one but not the other. There are also tasks that can be performed efficiently with one but not with the other.
On the wiki page, it would also be a good idea to refer to established and more recent W3C work that is relevant, including VoiceXML, and the Community Group reports:
https://www.w3.org/2019/04/dmpl/

https://www.w3.org/2019/11/dms/


-----Original Message-----
From: Joshue O'Connor <joconnor@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, 26 February 2021 7:33
To: RQTF <public-rqtf@w3.org>
Cc: Shadi Abou-Zahra <shadi@w3.org>
Subject: Conversational / Natural Language Interfaces / Interactive agent accessibility wiki update

Hi all,

I've had a go at distilling the current state of play regarding our scope discussion for our 'Voice/Smart/Interactive-agents/*' work.

https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FWAI%2FAPA%2Fwiki%2FVoice_agent_user_requirements&amp;data=04%7C01%7Cjjwhite%40ets.org%7Cb14c086079ea4ef9fd8608d8da52ab6f%7C0ba6e9b760b34fae92f37e6ddd9e9b65%7C0%7C0%7C637499395906932026%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&amp;sdata=lXoe3G6w3MfBrK1c3qfRY3Ge2ROtGNdB3909dUiFksw%3D&amp;reserved=0


While this still sits under an URL with Voice Agents in the title - I think we will be moving from that at some stage soon *grin.

I think this discussion is really getting somewhere, and thanks to all for excellent contributions on the recent RQTF call, and via the list.

Special shouts to Jason and John, for a fantastically useful thread that I have plundered liberally. It still needs work, but I hope I have broadly managed to capture your angles of vision, distill the discussion and frame some research questions for our use.

Comments and further discussion very welcome.

Thanks

Josh
--
Emerging Web Technology Specialist/Accessibility (WAI/W3C)


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Received on Friday, 26 February 2021 16:43:36 UTC