Foreword

Speech is the most human of human interfaces. No written text has the impact of a baby's cry, a lover's whisper … or your boss calling you into his office!

But until recently, the cost and complexity of implementation meant that there was no freedom of speech where software interface design is concerned.

Voice applications required a special purpose computer equipped with telephony and voice synthesis hardware. The software to program these machines was proprietary, complex, and arcane.

Now XML is changing all that - as it has so many other aspects of computing - in the form of a markup language for describing and controlling conversations. VoiceXML, in conjunction with advances in speech recognition and synthesis, is rapidly making the Web a vocal medium.

Adam Hocek and David Cuddihy are just the people to teach you how to take advantage of this new technology. They are professional engineers with decades of telephony and audio experience, and they work with VoiceXML every day.

XML may not be a spoken language, but with VoiceXML and this book you can bring the power and freedom of speech to your applications and Web sites.

Charles F. Goldfarb
Saratoga, CA
November 15, 2002