Srapi Committee Members To Support Speech Recognition Api In Future Products

Speech Recognition API to Become the Industry Standard

OREM, Utah -- April 6, 1995 -- The Speech Recognition Application Programming Interface (SRAPI) Committee today announced that several members have committed to supporting its speech recognition API in their upcoming products. Supporting vendors include Dragon Systems, IBM, Kolvox Communications, Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Lernout& Hauspie Speech Products, Philips Dictation Systems, Voice Processing Corp. and Novell, Inc. Intel Corp., an active member of the Committee, has also committed to support the speech recognition API through the work of its Intel Architecture Labs.

The Speech Recognition API Committee is comprised of many of the leading companies in speech recognition. A main goal of the committee is to create a standard for interaction between independent software vendor (ISV) products and speech recognition vendors. The committee supports general dictation speech recognizers, enabling users enter to data and create text through dictation, and command and control speech recognizers which allow users to navigate through operating systems and applications.

The openly defined speech recognition API will allow ISVs and application developers to integrate their products and applications with speech technology and various speech recognizers, further promoting the use of this emerging and enabling technology. ISVs and application developers can build applications written to the speech recognition API specifications to operate with speech solutions from the industry's leading speech recognition vendors.

"Speech recognition technology becomes a very effective productivity tool when it is tightly integrated with software applications," said Novell's Bruce Armstrong, chairman, SRAPI Committee. "The goal of the Committee has been to develop and promote a universal, robust speech solution, effectively minimizing the burden on application developers to build speech-enabled applications. The speech recognition API provides an excellent method and standard for applications to utilize the productivity benefits of speech technology. With the major speech recognition vendors supporting the SRAPI Committee speech recognition API, we expect it to become the defacto industry standard."

"Before speech recognition standards, speech application developers had two difficult options," said William S. Meisel, publisher/editor, Speech Recognition Update. "They could develop a fully integrated application -- like a word processor -- from scratch, re-inventing the wheel. Or they could poke at an existing application from outside, often simulating keyboard entry or menu selection, and end up with an application that did not use the full power of speech recognition. The SRAPI effort offers a solution to this dilemma."

Distribution of the speech recognition API is targeted for general availability in 1995. The API will be royalty free with unlimited licensing. Initially targeted at the Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 environments, the SRAPI Committee will soon add support for UNIX, OS/2, NetWare and OpenDoc.