Taking Dictation

A Web telephony application can let the caller enter text by speaking into the telephone. This is called taking dictation, and is useful for getting small amounts of information from the caller.

Taking dictation involves enabling SR by setting the application's WTEApplication.UseSR property to TRUE. When SR is enabled, the caller can speak into any entry field created by the TEXTAREA element, or by the INPUT element with the TYPE=text attribute. The SR engine does its best to recognize the speech and translate it into text, which the WTE then enters into the entry field.

You can improve the recognition accuracy of the SR engine by associating a grammar file (.cfg) with the TEXTAREA or INPUT element. The grammar file specifies the words that you expect the caller to say. For more information, see Using the GRAMMAR Attribute. Using the TEXTAREA or text-type INPUT element requires that you also specify an input termination string by using the InputTerminator property. Callers enter this string to signal that they have finished entering dictation. You can use the MAXLENGTH attribute with the INPUT element to specify the maximum number of characters for the entry field. Dictation terminates when the caller enters the last character. For more information, see Terminating Input.