Surfing the Web by Voice

摘要

We describe a speaker independent, continuous, real-time, flexible vocabulary, dynamic grammar speech interface to the World Wide Web as a step toward building an intelligent user agent. In addition to speakable control words (e.g., "scroll down" and "back"), we have made NCSA Mosaic speech aware in three novel ways. First, the interface implements the idea of a speakable hotlist — the user can asso-ciate any grammar or "language" with any URL (e.g., saying "What's the weather today?" brings up the URL ). Second, the interface includes speakable links — the user can speak any underlined hypertext link on any page. This involves some lexical challenges (e.g., "DOW DOWN 1.68 AT 11"), on-the-fly pronunciation genera-tion, and dynamic grammar modification. Finally, we have implemented the concept of smart pages, making it possible to associate a grammar with any Web page. In this way, the interface knows the language for that page, recognizes sentences using that language, and passes the result back to the page for interpretation. To avoid coverage issues, each smart page can briefly describe the language to the user. With this approach, we can effectively distribute knowledge rather than attempt to construct an omniscient user agent.