Bringing context-aware access to the web through spoken interaction

摘要

The web has become the largest repository of multimedia information and its convergence with telecommunications is now bringing the benefits of web technology to hand-held devices. To optimize data access using these devices and provide services which meet the user needs through intelligent information retrieval, the system must sense and interpret the user environment and the communication context. In addition, natural spoken conversation with handheld devices makes possible the use of these applications in environments in which the use of GUI interfaces is not effective, provides a more natural human-computer interaction, and facilitates access to the web for people with visual or motor disabilities, allowing their integration and the elimination of barriers to Internet access. In this paper, we present an architecture for the design of context-aware systems that use speech to access web services. Our contribution focuses specifically on the use of context information to improve the effectiveness of providing web services by using a spoken dialog system for the user-system interaction. We also describe an application of our proposal to develop a context-aware railway information system, and provide a detailed evaluation of the influence of the context information in the quality of the services that are supplied.