Conversations with computers may be the stuff of science fiction for the time being, but the past decade has witnessed a tremendous growth in speech-based interactive technologies, stimulated by the vastly increased processing power of computers, and by a sustained effort by the speech research community. This important and timely book brings together state-of-the-art expert knowledge in automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis.

It focuses on three central themes: recognition, production and dialogue. It covers design and evaluation, error correction, feedback, and the use of speech technology with other I/O media - keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, etc. It argues that whilst the application of speech technology is currently not ubiquitous, this situation would alter radically with ergonomics and human factors interventions, so developing strategies by which speech technology could be made truly interactive