Integrating speech enabled services in a Web-based e-learning environment

We investigate the deployment possibilities of speech enabled services in a Web based e-learning environment. The integration of speech technology is realized with a client/server architecture. Therefore, the services speech synthesis, speech recognition, and speaker verification are installed at a central SpeechServer. The client uses a Java applet (SpeechApplet), which is integrated in an HTML page. It takes the user´s input (e.g. speech or text input) and activates the according service at the SpeechServer. The SpeechApplet is easy to integrate into existing Web pages and aims at a simple JavaScript interface for communication between the Web page and the applet. In this paper we introduce this system, explain different modules, and discuss first evaluation results of these technologies.