Voice browser

About: Voice browser is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 140 publications have been published within this topic receiving 5476 citations.

Synchronization among plural browsers

Abstract: A technique for synchronizing a visual browser and a voice browser. A visual browser is used to navigate through visual content, such as WML pages. During the navigation, the visual browser creates a historical record of events that have occurred during the navigation. The voice browser uses this historical record to navigate the content in the same manner as occurred on the visual browser, thereby synchronizing to a state equivalent to that of the visual browser. The creation of the historical record may be performed by using a script to trap events, where the script contains code that records the trapped events. The synchronization technique may be used with a multi-modal application that permits the mode of input/output (I/O) to be changed between visual and voice browsers. When the mode is changed from visual to voice, the record of events captured by the visual browser is provided to the voice browser, thereby allowing the I/O mode to change seamlessly from visual to voice. Likewise, the voice browser captures events which may be provided to the visual browser when the I/O mode is changed from voice to visual.

Voice browser dialog enabler for a communication system

Abstract: A voice browser dialog enabler for multimodal dialog uses a multimodal markup document (22) with fields having markup-based forms associated with each field and defining fragments (45). A voice browser driver (43) resides on a communication device (10) and provides the fragments (45) and identifiers (48) that identify the fragments (45). A voice browser implementation (46) resides on a remote voice server (38) and receives the fragments (45) from the driver (43) and downloads a plurality of speech grammars. Input speech is matched against those speech grammars associated with the corresponding identifiers (48) received in a recognition request from the voice browser driver (43).

Point-of-sale (POS) voice authentication transaction system

Abstract: A system and method for providing voice authentication during a sale transaction through a telephone system or other communication means, wherein users to the service may require voice authentication as a prerequisite to conduct a conventional credit card or debit transaction. The voice authentication step is performed based on a comparison between a previously recorded voice message and the voice message inserted through the system using the voice browser and the voice recognition technology.

Analysis of navigability of Web applications for improving blind usability

Abstract: Various accessibility activities are improving blind access to the increasingly indispensable WWW. These approaches use various metrics to measure the Web's accessibility. “Ease of navigation” (navigability) is one of the crucial factors for blind usability, especially for complicated webpages used in portals and online shopping sites. However, it is difficult for automatic checking tools to evaluate the navigation capabilities even for a single webpage. Navigability issues for complete Web applications are still far beyond their capabilities.This study aims at obtaining quantitative results about the current accessibility status of real world Web applications, and analyzes real users' behavior on such websites. In Study 1, an automatic analysis method for webpage navigability is introduced, and then a broad survey using this method for 30 international online shopping sites is described. The next study (Study 2) focuses on a fine-grained analysis of real users' behavior on some of these online shopping sites. We modified a voice browser to record each user's actions and the information presented to that user. We conducted user testing on existing sites with this tool. We also developed an analysis and visualization method for the recorded information. The results showed us that users strongly depend on scanning navigation instead of logical navigation. A landmark-oriented navigation model was proposed based on the results. Finally, we discuss future possibilities for improving navigability, including proposals for voice browsers.

Methods and systems for accessing information from an information source

Abstract: The present invention relates to systems and methods to provide a user with information from an information source (106). A system in accordance with the present invention includes a communication node (212) including a switch (260) having at least one incoming line. An audio processing unit is communicatively coupled to the switch to receive incoming audio communications from the user and to provide outgoing audio communications to the user. A voice browser (250) is communicatively coupled to the audio processing unit. The voice browser retrieves information from the information source and provides an output to the audio processing unit. The audio processing unit provides an outgoing audio communications to the user in response to the output. The method in accordance with the present invention includes the steps of receiving an audio input from a user associated with the destination based on the audio input, and retrieve information associated with the destination.