Browsers will learn to speak and understand human speech

Employees of the new group, formed by a consortium of World Wide Web Consortium, will explore the possibility of extending the functionality of today's Web browsers. Perhaps in the very near future, browsers will learn to read aloud the contents of the pages, as well as allow users to fill in various forms using voice commands.

"It is the responsibility of the working group W3C HTML Speech Incubator Group is studying the feasibility of developing a standard web interface with integrated voice recognition and synthesis of human speech", - explained chairman Dan Burnett (Dan Burnett), the team leader and head of the "voice" business unit Voxeo Corp.

Experts, which include representatives of AT & T, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla Foundation, as well as other companies and organizations will need to report the extent appropriate and feasible is the idea of adding support for input and output of speech in a new specification standard, HTML5. A report on the study results will be published within the next year.

Dan Burnett emphasizes that the newly formed group will only analytical and research work. Development of interfaces themselves are likely will be engaged in by representatives of the other branch W3C, for example, HTML Working Group.

Attempts to integrate voice control of the browser made earlier. For example, Google offers owners of mobile devices based on Android to use verbal commands to find data on the network. Extensive support for voice control promises to implement and Microsoft in the upcoming versions of the Windows Phone 7.