Voice based web services - An assistive technology for visually impaired persons

This article reviews a voice interactive system design utilizing VoiceXML technology. Voice based web services can be used as an alternative to other existing forms of assistive technology for use by visually impaired or blind persons, as well as other people having a disability. For example, they can access news from a variety of local, regional or national newspapers and the only equipment necessary is a touch-tone telephone with no requisite knowledge of personal computers or specialized software required. VoiceXML standard is a tag based scripting language based on Extended Mark up Language (XML) and is used to design voice interactive information access systems supported by natural language and text to speech processing tools for interpretation and transcribing information. The voice based services are designed and hosted in a web server using server side technologies that generate VoiceXML scripts for the information to be delivered, while the VoiceXML interpreter platforms renders this information at a certain cost from anywhere by dialing a toll free telephone number.