Few voice-in/voice-out applications are available on the web. One problem appears to be the lack of appropriate open-source tools. More speech applications would increase the functionality of the web for people with visual, cognitive, and motor disabilities. Our research group has developed open-source tools for the creation and deployment of speech applications by non-expert as well as expert users, and an open-source software platform to deploy those applications on the web. In addition, a suite of exemplar speech applications, together with documentation, has been built to facilitate the creation and deployment of similar applications by others.

A SpeechWeb is a collection of hyperlinked applications, which are accessed remotely by speech browsers running on end-user devices. Links are activated through spoken commands. Despite the fact that protocols and technologies for creating and deploying speech applications have been readily available for several years, we have not seen the development of a Public-Domain SpeechWeb. In this paper, we show how freely available software and commonly used communication protocols can be used to change this situation.