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Speech-enabled HTML on the way...

A consortium of tech companies is developing a programming language for wireless devices that lets users input changes to web pages though speech recognition. The Speech Application Language Tags (Salt) forum is exploring the possibility of increasing the capabilities of HTML, xHTML and XML. In theory, users will be able to embed "speech tags" into existing pages without the need to rewrite code. The Salt forum contains representatives from Cisco, Intel, Microsoft and Speechworks, among others. The forum hopes to make the standard available to the public by March 2002 and intends to submit the technology to a standards body by the middle of next year, according to reports on US wires.