Speech browsing the World Wide Web

The use of spoken language as an input modality can help overcome some limitations of pointer-based browsers and thus, improve the human-computer interaction for browsing the World Wide Web. A study was conducted to determine whether real users can be effective using speech for browsing and also to determine the users preferences for browsing between the speech and mouse modalities. The study revealed that the users adopt a no-nonsense approach for speech browsing in which they issue commands by saying one or two keywords. The most important finding of the study was that the choice for an interaction modality is governed more by the usability attribute of user satisfaction than by efficiency of use. Most users prefer to use speech over mouse, even if they can be quicker with a mouse, because it makes the interaction easier for them