On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 10:38 PM, David Singer <sin...@apple.com> wrote: > I am a little concerned that we are increasingly breaking down a metaphor, a > 'virtual interface' without realizing what that abstraction buys us. At the > moment, we have the concept of a hypothetical pointer and hypothetical > keyboard, (with some abstract states, such as focus) that you can actually > drive using a whole bunch of physical modalities. If we develop UIs that are > specific to people actually speaking, we have 'torn the veil' of that > abstract interface. What happens to people who cannot speak, for example? Or > who cannot say the language needed well enough to be recognized?
It should be possible to drive <input type="speech"> with keyboard input, if the user agent chooses to implement that. Nothing in the API should require the user to actually speak. I think this is a strong argument for why <input type="speech"> should not be replaced by a microphone API and a separate speech recognizer, since the latter would be very hard to make accessible. (I still think that there should be a microphone API for applications like audio chat, but that's a separate discussion). -- Bjorn Bringert Google UK Limited, Registered Office: Belgrave House, 76 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 9TQ Registered in England Number: 3977902
