Exercise 25-part3

3. Visit the W3C website and find the status of the VoiceXML project. When do you think it will affect business on the web and what will its impact be?

W3 (2008) states that the Voice Browser Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0. This document specifies VoiceXML 3.0, a modular XML language for creating interactive media dialogs that feature synthesized speech, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, telephony, mixed initiative conversations, and recording and presentation of a variety of media formats including digitized audio, and digitized video. The primary goal of this version is to bring the advantages of Web-based development and content delivery to interactive voice response applications.

When gauging VoiceXML server performance, Cisco (2009) states that the key aspects to consider are:
• Network bandwidth between Web application server and the VoiceGateway and QOS.
• Performance on the VoiceXML Server - CVP Bill of Materials (BOM) requires the MCS-7845 as a VoiceXML server. Adequate performanceis required on the server side to respond to VoiceXML over HTTP requests.
• Use of pre-recorded Audio vs. Text to Speech - Good Voice User Interface applications tend to use pre-recorded audio files wherever possible.Recorded audio sounds much better than TTS. Pre-recorded Audio file quality needs to be designedsuch that it does not impact download time and browser interpretation. Make recordings in 8-bit Mulaw 8Khz format.
• Audio File Caching - Make sure the Voice gateway is set to cache Audio content prevents delays in having to downloadfiles from the media source.Refer to the Section titled Gateway Prompt Caching Considerations for more details on PromptManagement on Supported Gateways
• Use of Grammars - A voice application, like any user-centric application, is prone to certain problems that might onlybe discovered through formal usability testing, or observation of the application in use. Poor speech recognition accuracy is one type of problem common to voice applications, and a problem mostoften caused by poor grammar implementation. When users mispronounce words or say things that the grammar designer does not expect, the recognizer cannot match their input against the grammar.Poorly designed grammars containing many difficult-to-distinguish entries also results in manymisrecognized inputs leading to decreased performance on the VoiceXML server.Grammar tuning is the process of improving recognition accuracy by modifying a grammar basedon an analysis of its performance.

Hence, in order to implement the VoiceXML on their web, business needs focus on above points.
Otherwise, poor performance with VoiceXML will result in negative response.

References:
W3 (2008). " W3C Home Page News Archive". Received 10th May, 2009 from URL -http://www.w3.org/News/2008

Cisco (2009). "Design Implications for VoiceXML Server". Received 10th May, 2009 from URL -Design Implications for VoiceXML Server