Answers to Your Questions About VoiceXML

By Jeff Kunins

(Continued from Part 1)

Q: I'm located in Sophia-Antipolis, France. Is there VoiceXML training available in my area?

A: I'm not aware of any classroom VoiceXML training available in that area at the present time. However, there is now a wealth of VoiceXML resources available on the Web for free. Excellent VoiceXML documentation, tutorials and free testing facilities are available from multiple sites (quite a few are listed at the end of this month's First Words column). Another good place to get started is the VoiceXML Forum site (http://www.voicexml.org), namely its interactive tutorials (http://www.voicexml.org/tutorials/index.html).

Q: Is it possible to use VoiceXML to simultaneously control voice and data applications such as WAP?

A: Currently, the answer is no. VoiceXML is explicitly designed to describe the conversational interaction between a person and a speech-enabled automated IVR system. Similarly, WAP's WML is explicitly designed to describe the visual/tactile interaction between a person and a small-screen display on a wireless phone.

The idea of "multi-modal" devices, interfaces, and the requisite markup languages to write applications for them is one that is actively being researched in the W3C (http://www.w3.org), and at several key companies including Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com).

A few weeks ago, an excellent article about current work, limitations, and strategic directions for multi-modal devices (XML Meets "IVR with an LCD" by Robert Richardson) was published on Computer Telephony.com.

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