September 2002

Better integration of speech technologies with mobile computing systems should result from the creation of a new software standard called SALT (Speech Application Language Tags). Its backers say it will help developers to create mobile applications that respond to and handle spoken commands.

The first version of the SALT "markup" specification for multimodal and telephony systems was published in July, and now the standard has been submitted formally for evaluation by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body that looks after Internet standards.

The royalty-free SALT specification is designed to work on a very wide range of devices including traditional computers, handheld devices such as PDAs, home electronics devices such as video recorders, telematics devices such as in-car navigation systems, and communications devices such as mobile phones.

Essentially SALT allows developers to add new "tags" to existing markup systems such as HTML, XHTML and XML, which are used in documents and Web pages to define the appearance and function of the contents. The initial standard deals mainly with speech input and output and call control, handling these functions either as standalone events or jointly with other interface options such as speaking while pointing to the screen with a stylus.

 

Behind the SALT Forum is a group that includes Cisco Systems, Comverse, Intel, Microsoft, Philips Speech Processing and SpeechWorks International. Contributing members include Alcatel, Compaq, Deutsche Telecom and Siemens.