Spoken Language Interface in ECMA/ISO Telecommunication Standards

Computer Supported Telecommunication Applications (CSTA) is a widely adopted ECMA/ISO standard suite for global and enterprise communications. As it becomes evident that spoken language systems are playing an ever important role in telecommunications, CSTA has been revised to include a specification on spoken language interfaces so as to promote the interoperability and adoption of spoken language technologies. The new specification shares the same design philosophy as the Speech Application Language Tags, or SALT, that provides simple yet rich functionality for spoken language processing. The tight integration of speech into the telecommunication infrastructure not only presents many technical benefits but also ushers in an era that can potentially make spoken language technologies even more prevalent in our daily lives. This paper describes the design considerations for the specification, and shows how this new standard can be used in conjunction with other standards to create powerful speech applications.