Re: TTS from web content?

Hi Janina,

What I see here is declarative speech markup vs. what David is proposing.
Is there a place I should look that I am missing?

Rich

Rich Schwerdtfeger
CTO Accessibility Software Group



From:	Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net>
To:	wai-xtech@w3.org
Cc:	James Larson <jim@larson-tech.com>
Date:	08/19/2010 04:00 PM
Subject:	Re: TTS from web content?
Sent by:	wai-xtech-request@w3.org



We have a Voice Working Group within the W3C that has already done
quite a bit of work in this area, especially as regards delivering web
content by traditional telephone:

http://www.w3.org/Voice/

In fact, Jim Larson, Chair of this WG, recently approached PF about
working together to mount some content using their voice technology. We
discussed this briefly with great interest during our last WAI-CG.

So, I'm uncertain from David's post just what kind of delivery is
contemplated here. But, we certainly don't need to start from scratch to
implement something useful and soon.

I've cc'd Jim into this conversation.

Janina


David Bolter writes:
>  Hi all,
>
> What do you think about having browsers provide built-in
> text-to-speech capability to web content? While I imagine a
> declarative approach might be quite interesting I think we can go
> farther faster with a JavaScript API approach. The main two concerns
> I have are:
>
> 1. We don't want to encourage unpolished aural interfaces.
> 2. We don't want to conflict with traditional screen readers.
>
> The biggest potential I see is:
>
> 1. Innovation in Aural interfaces. The same kind of innovation we
> see happening in visual DHTML interfaces.
> 2. TTS solutions in places, and on devices where traditional screen
> readers are problematic. For example, perhaps on some mobile devices
> that are currently not accessible.
> 3. The TTS can be done in the browser, on the native platform (e.g.
> Voice Over on OSX), or 'in the cloud'. We just need to get the API
> right.
>
> Are we ready? Please speak up.
>
> cheers,
> David

--

Janina Sajka,		 Phone:		 +1.443.300.2200
		 		 sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net

Chair, Open Accessibility		 janina@a11y.org
Linux Foundation		 		 http://a11y.org

Chair, Protocols & Formats
Web Accessibility Initiative		 http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)