Speaking to, from, and through computers: Speech technologies and user-interface design

Speech is the prototypical, usually preferred, communication mode for humans. Recent progress in digitally processing and transporting human speech, in synthesizing speech from text, and in automatic recognition of human speech, promises improvements in both human-to-human and human-to-machine communication. We examine the roles of the human factors specialist, applied psychologist, and linguist, in developing and deploying these new technologies, and in constructing human-to-machine interfaces particularly suitable for speech input/output.