Speech interfaces in Indian languages for access to Internet resources

Speech interfaces for access to databases and Internet resources ore gaining importance. Recent advances in speech technology and the widespread adoption of VoiceXML to specify dialogs over the human-computer interface have taken speech interfaces closer to the real world. The architecture Of networks for providing access to speech interfaces involves attention to several issues such as telephone tariffs, quality of VolP channels, the cost and effort involved in voice enabling a large number of websites, etc., many of these issues being of special interest to countries like India. In addition, speech interfaces in locally relevant languages have significant importance. This paper explores approaches for providing access to resources over the Internet, using speech communication in Indian languages. It also reports the results of small-scale trials involving a speech interface to a local store of news. This is in the form of a prototype news service application employing interfaces in Hindi and Telugu, aimed at disseminating news (it low cost. Our results indicate satisfaction with the speech interface at the prototype level, using small sets of listeners.