Summary of Voice Browser Working Group March Face-to-Face meeting

This is a summary of the most recent face to face meeting of the W3C
Voice Browser Working Group.

March 3-4, 2003
Cambridge, MA, USA
Hosted by the W3C, in conjunction with the Third Technical Plenary
Meeting of the W3C

Semantic Interpretation.  We agreed to the final technical changes to
the Semantic Interpretation Language and agreed to publish it as a
working draft.

Speech Recognition Grammar Specification.  We completed addressing all
of the comments received during the CR period and edited the
specification appropriately.

Speech Synthesis.  We continued reviewing public comments, especially
with the <lexico> and <say-as> elements.  The working group expects to
produce a separate document that will detail attributes of <say-as> but
did not want this effort to delay publication of SSML.  We also
concluded that <break> should have two attributes: strength and time .
We discussed the types and complexity of testing for the Speech
Synthesis Implementation Report, and started writing tests by writing a
couple of critical tests for each section of the speech synthesis
document.

Voice Interaction Objects.  This joint Voice Browser/Multimodal
Interaction task force met in the evening.  We reviewed the introduction
to the VIO requirements document and agreed to its rewording, and
reviewed some of the general requirements.

VoiceXML 2.0.  We reviewed the status of the implementation report, and
agreed that it is ready for publication.

Web Accessibility Initiative--Protocols and Formats.  WAI's requirements
for a general lexicon are much broader than our requirements for a
pronunciation lexicon.  There is a need for a text user interface for
impaired users.  There is also a need for standard verbs for navigating
web pages, which is only partially addressed by the ETSI list of
telephony commands in each of English, French, Italian, Spanish, and
German.

Lexicon.  We established three criteria for restarting our work on a
pronunciation lexicon specification:
.    Several companies must be willing to commit resources to bring the
Lexicon language to full recommendation.
.    We have a reasonable belief that we can define a standard and
resolve the representational issues,
.    Effort does not distract from V3, SSML, and SI
We agreed not to restart work at this time, and will review these
criteria at our next face-to-face meeting.  Dave Raggett will lead an
analysis effort and report back on interest and resources available to
initiate work in this area.

V3--the follow on to VoiceXML 2.0.  We are in a requirements collection
phase.  We heard presentations from TAG, WQ, and DOM Level 3 and
presentations about XML and SALT's SMEX.  This was followed by a lengthy
discussion on V3 requirements, which continue during our weekly telecoms.

The next face to face meeting will take place June 4-6, 2003, in
Redmond, Washington, hosted by Microsoft.

Jim Larson
Co-Chair, Voice Browser Working Group

Received on Friday, 11 April 2003 19:37:29 UTC