Developers Can Add Speech Technology with New Toolkit from Chant

SpeechKit provides the fastest way to integrate speech technology into any application

Marina del Rey, California, May 3, 1999—Chant Inc., announced today general availability of SpeechKit Version 2.1, component software for easily adding speech recognition and speech synthesis (text-to-speech) capabilities to desktop and webenabled applications. With Chant component software, you can talk with your applications to fill out forms, query databases, enter transactions, navigate applications, ask questions and get responses without having to use a computer mouse or keyboard.

You can deliver speech-aware applications fast.

Existing applications can be enhanced and new ones constructed quickly by simply turning on and off speech recognition and speech synthesis when appropriate. You can say commands, phrases, and dictate continuously all within the same application. Chant component software provides an easy way to manage multiple vocabularies required for this. With a built in grammar compiler, you can create dynamic vocabularies on the fly.

You can talk with your applications with very little work.

Chant component software allows you to talk with your applications automatically and eliminates the need for you to understand the complexities of speech recognition and speech synthesis. No complex programming is required. You can recognize live speech from speaking into a microphone or from a pre-recorded wave audio file. You can also synthesize speech for real-time playback or for saving as a wave audio file for playback later.

You can develop simple to sophisticated engine-independent applications.

Chant component software obviates the need for you to write your application to use a specific engine. This enables your application to work with the maximum number of available engines. You can quickly switch among speech recognition engines to see which one works best for your environment and application. Auditioning voices for synthesizing speech is easy because you can switch among text-to-speech engines to hear which voice sounds best for your application. This also means you can deploy your speech-aware applications independent of these engines. Your end-users can use your application with their speech technology configured for their needs and environment.

You can talk with window and dialog controls automatically.

Optionally, you can have Chant component software filter recognized speech for displaying menus, invoking menu items, clicking buttons, setting focus, scrolling, selecting from a list, and operating controls.

You can talk with your applications in different languages.

Chant component software supports multiple languages and locales. You can develop speech-aware applications for different languages as supported by the speech recognition and text-to-speech engines.

You can develop speech-aware applications using your favorite RAD environment.

Chant component software works with applications developed using your favorite rapid application development (RAD) environments and programming languages such as C/C++, Delphi, Java, Smalltalk, and Visual Basic.

System Requirements

Chant component software for speech recognition and text-to-speech works with Microsoft SAPI (Version 2 and higher) compliant engines and IBM SMAPI (Version 3 and higher) VoiceType and ViaVoice engines. Chant component software supports Windows 95, 98, and NT platforms.

About Chant

For more information about SpeechKit and other Chant services and products, contact Chant Inc., 4712 Admiralty Way, Suite 550 Marina del Rey, California 90292-6998, phone (310) 410-9895, fax (310) 410-9896, E-mail online@chant.net or visit the Chant World Wide Web site at: https://www.chant.net.

Product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Chant Inc. or their respective owners.