RE: Reviewers sought for Voice Browser Requirement specs (fwd)

Comments from Bradley Dodd:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 16:11:56 -0000
From: Dr. Bradley Dodd <bdodd@adtek.u-net.com>
To: Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org>
Subject: RE: Reviewers sought for Voice Browser Requirement specs

Hello. I have read through the Introduction and some other parts of
the proposal but I only had four days which is not long enough. Let
me say firstly, that I think it is excellent work and the various
committees are to be congratulated. The browsers I have used are
Kurzweil 3000 for, example, which reads the contents of a page to
you ---- in effect they are not browsers in themselves but browser
"plug-ins" based on IE4. I can see that the browser that is proposed
should be interactive with one's voice which must be the way
forward. There are one or two associated aspects that may already be
covered in the proposals, if they are I apologise but they are
important to me and the people I teach.

Imagine a user without arms. Imagine that user wants to use a voice
browser. How can he/she get to it other than by asking someone else
to log in and open the browser? The problem will still be for such
people, how to get from the Desktop to the browser with no hands. I
know there is some research being carried out which moves the mouse
pointer around the Desktop by the users' voice. I feel it would be a
great help to incorporate this type of relatively simple mouse
navigation as an "add-on" to the voice browser software. I am sure
this would benefit many quite seriously disabled computer users who
are confined to their homes for most of the time. A typical
disability would be fairly advanced multiple sclerosis in which the
person has lost control of his/her arms and has to wear powerful
coloured spectacles to see at all well.

For the able-bodied person the proposals are excellent and will be
the way ahead with 'phones etc. But for many disabled people, they
will not be able to use these wonderful facilities until they can
navigate the mouse pointer with voice commands.

I hope the above is helpful but I do realize that it may already be
covered further into the documents than I have been able to read.
Overall I think it is excellent work, as I have said, and I hope you
will be able to keep me in contact with these exciting developments.
Best wishes, Brad Dodd

-----Original Message-----
From: www-voice-request@w3.org
Sent: 10 January 2000 11:50
To: www-voice@w3.org
Subject: Reviewers sought for Voice Browser Requirement specs


The W3C Voice Browser working group is interested in obtaining
your comments on the requirements drafts for voice browsers, see

   http://www.w3.org/Voice

The working group is using these drafts as a basis to review
existing and new specifications for dialogs, speech grammars,
natural language representation, and speech synthesis.

Regards,

-- Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
tel/fax: +44 122 578 3011 (or 2521) +44 385 320 444 (mobile)
World Wide Web Consortium (on assignment from HP Labs)

Received on Thursday, 13 January 2000 12:33:15 UTC