Aborting speech recognition when web page looses focus

• From: Hans Wennborg <hwennborg@google.com>
• Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:57:11 +0100
• To: public-speech-api@w3.org
• Message-ID: <CAB8jPhdrGuHS8+LYoo8u=WWHNpJsx7br6aQ2jdS+LpRezpao6w@mail.gmail.com>

Hi all,

The current spec draft lists four security and privacy considerations
[1], summarized as:

1. The UA must ask for explicit informed user consent before starting
any recording
2. The UA must clearly indicate when it's recording
3. The UA may give a longer explanation the first time speech
recognition is used
4. The UA must abort any active speech input session if focus moves
away from the web page.

Points one and two seem to me to be the critical points to ensure the
user's privacy. They also line up nicely with the requirements for
accessing a user's microphone or webcam through the GetUserMedia API
[2].

I propose that we remove the last point. I think it unnecessarily
reduces the usefulness of the speech recognition API. For example, a
user wouldn't be allowed to use a speech-enabled application in one
window, and at the same time interact with another window next to it.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Hans

[1]. http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/speech-api/raw-file/tip/speechapi.html#security
[2]. http://dev.w3.org/2011/webrtc/editor/getusermedia.html

Received on Thursday, 16 August 2012 14:58:00 UTC