Next Generation Digital Services Featured Articles

NTT Communications Intros Cross-Browser Speech Recognition API

By Michelle Amodio
TMCnet Contributor

NTT (News - Alert) Communications launched the first free speech-recognition API compatible across browsers, now available free of charge on SkyWay, NTT's free platform for WebRTC technologies.

The API currently supports Chrome, Firefox and Opera, with plans to support Microsoft (News - Alert) Edge in the near future.

Using JavaScript, the API supports multiple browsers as SkyWay provides the speech-recognition servers, which leverages technologies developed at NTT Laboratories. NTT’s service is available in Japanese only, but English is due out soon, per the company announcement. 

One benefit of voice recognition software use is its flexibility. Flexibility is an important feature of any technological tool, and for voice recognition, it means not being stuck with one device. Thanks to the cloud, users can share one profile without the need to plug in. This results in fewer challenges come audit time.

This is all part and parcel to the larger picture of digital services; the fourth wave of digital services precisely.  Software is dominating the world, challenging how business is conducted. The fourth wave means businesses are building their own capabilities, partnering with others to develop new business models and explore new engagement and revenue opportunities.

APIs are very much apart of this wave, as we’ve seen them work for businesses in the way of pulling relevant data and featuring it on a website, or running databases to match email addresses against social media profiles. With speech recognition APIs being put to use within Web browsers, business Web sites can easily come alive by enabling them to listen to visitors.

Many more people have become familiar with this concept of speech recognition thanks to software like Siri. These types of applications can drastically improve the way users perform tasks. In a website, users could navigate pages or populate form fields using their voice.

The implementation of speech APIs are at a very early stage, and it’s only a matter of time before we see more added to the limited set of features.