A voice browser is a web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

 that presents an interactive voice user interface to the user. In addition, it typically provides an interface to the PSTN or a PBX. Just as a visual web browser works with HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 pages, a voice browser operates on pages that specify voice dialogues. Typically these pages are written in VoiceXML

VoiceXML

VoiceXML is the W3C's standard XML format for specifying interactive voice dialogues between a human and a computer. It allows voice applications to be developed and deployed in an analogous way to HTML for visual applications. Just as HTML documents are interpreted by a visual web browser,...

, the W3C

World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...

's standard voice dialog markup language, but other proprietary voice dialogue languages remain in use.

A voice browser presents information aurally, using pre-recorded audio file playback or using text-to-speech software to render textual information as audio. A voice browser obtains information using speech recognition

Speech recognition

Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...

 and keypad entry (e.g., DTMF detection).

As speech recognition and web technologies have matured over the past decade, thousands of voice applications have been deployed commercially and voice browsers are supplanting traditional proprietary IVR

Interactive voice response

Interactive voice response is a technology that allows a computer to interact with humans through the use of voice and DTMF keypad inputs....

 systems. Scores of companies provide voice browsers. These take the form of software, packaged hardware/software solutions or hosted solutions.

See also

• CCXML - Call Control eXtensible Markup Language
• VoiceXML
  VoiceXML
  VoiceXML is the W3C's standard XML format for specifying interactive voice dialogues between a human and a computer. It allows voice applications to be developed and deployed in an analogous way to HTML for visual applications. Just as HTML documents are interpreted by a visual web browser,...
  
   - Voice Dialog eXtensible Markup Language
• SRGS - Speech Recognition Grammar Specification
• SISR - Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition
• SSML
  Speech Synthesis Markup Language
  Speech Synthesis Markup Language is an XML-based markup language for speech synthesis applications. It is a recommendation of the W3C's voice browser working group. SSML is often embedded in VoiceXML scripts to drive interactive telephony systems. However, it also may be used alone, such as for...
  
   - Speech Synthesis Markup Language
• PLS
  Pronunciation Lexicon Specification
  The Pronunciation Lexicon Specification is a W3C Recommendation, which is designed to enable interoperable specification of pronunciation information for both speech recognition and speech synthesis engines within voice browsing applications...
  
   - Pronunciation Lexicon Specification
• ECMAScript
  ECMAScript
  ECMAScript is the scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.- History :JavaScript...
  
  - Scripting language supported by most voice browsers

External links

• W3C's list of VoiceXML browsers
• Ken Rehor's VoiceXML platform list
• VoiceXML Forum
• W3C Voice Browser Working Group
• VXI* Voice Browser for Asterisk PBX
• VoiceXML Development Guide
• Voice Browsing IE Toolbar by Yan Michalevsky
• Project metalmouth - Developing an open source voice browser extension for Chrome