What is VoiceXML?

The Voice eXtensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) is an XML-based markup language for creating distributed voice applications that users can access from any telephone.

VoiceXML is an emerging industry standard defined by the VoiceXML Forum, of which IBM is a founding member. It has been accepted for submission by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as a standard for voice markup on the Web.

The VoiceXML language lets you use a familiar markup style and Web server-side logic to deliver voice content to the Internet. The VoiceXML applications you create can interact with your existing back-end business data and logic.

Users interact with these Web-based voice applications by speaking or by pressing telephone keys rather than through a graphical user interface.

VoiceXML supports dialogs that feature:

• Spoken input
• Telephone keypad input
• Recording of spoken input
• Synthesized speech output ("text-to-speech")
• Recorded audio output
• Telephony features such as call transfer and disconnect
• Dialog flow control
• Scoping of input