27 April 2007

Accessibility body the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced that a new voice standard has been upgraded to proposed recommendation status.

VoiceXML 2.1, which enables developers to build voice activated services into their applications, is backwards compatible with the previous version, with eight additional features now standardised.

Although the W3C points out that the upgrade does not signify an endorsement of the new standard, it notes the "phenomenally successful" implementation of its predecessor.

VoiceXML 2 was created specifically to enhance recognition of spoken word and speech synthesis - both of which could be powerful tools when speech-enabling websites for visually-impaired and disabled web users.

"This success has led to the development of additional, innovative features that help developers build even more powerful voice-activated services," states the organisation.

It adds that it was impossible to incorporate these additions into VoiceXML 2, hence the inception of this new working standard.

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