W3C advances the VoiceXML 2.1 specification to candidate recommendation

W3C advances the VoiceXML 2.1 specification to candidate recommendation

The popularity of VoiceXML 2.0 spurred the development of numerous voice 
browser implementations early in the specification process. Voice XML 
2.0 has been phenomenally successful in enabling the rapid deployment of 
voice applications that handle millions of phone calls every day. This 
success has led to the development of additional, innovative features 
that help developers build even more powerful voice-activated services. 
While it was too late to incorporate these additional features into 
VoiceXML 2.0, many of these features have been incorporated into 
VoiceXML 2.1.  VoiceXML 2.1 specifies a set of new features commonly 
implemented by Voice Extensible Markup Language platforms. This 
specification is designed to be fully backwards-compatible with VoiceXML 
2.0. 

On June 13, the W3C published the VoiceXML 2.1 specification as a 
Candidate Recommendation to indicate that the document is believed to be 
stable and to encourage implementation by the developer community.  New 
features include dynamic reference to grammars and scripts, the <mark> 
element to detect barge-in, the data <data> element to fetch data from 
the server, dynamic concatenation of prompts, and a new type of 
transfer.  The VoiceXML 2.1 specification is available from the W3C 
Voice Browser Working Group website, http://www.w3.org/Voice/

Jim Larson
Co-chair, W3C Voice Browser Working Group

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