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ScanSoft Endorses Speech Application Language Tags -SALT- Standard, Joins the SALT Forum
ScanSoft's Speech Engines to Enhance SALT Platforms Delivered by Microsoft and
Others
PEABODY, Mass., Nov 1, 2002 - ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT), a leading supplier of imaging, speech and language
solutions, today announced its endorsement of Speech Application Language Tags (SALT), an emerging standard for speech-enabling telephony,
mobile and Web applications. The company also announced that it has joined the SALT Forum, a standards-setting body that has Cisco, Intel,
Microsoft and Philips among its founding members. ScanSoft and Philips recently announced a definitive agreement in which ScanSoft will acquire
the Philips Speech Processing Telephony and Voice Control business units.
The SALT specification is a royalty-free, platform-independent standard that is designed to facilitate multimodal and telephony-enabled access to
information, applications, and Web services from telephones and wireless mobile devices. Multimodal access will enable users to interact with an
application in a variety of ways. They will be able to input data using speech, a keyboard, keypad, mouse and/or stylus, and produce data as
synthesized speech, audio, plain text, full-motion video, and/or graphics. The specification has been submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) for review.
The Microsoft .NET speech platform is one of several publicly announced SALT-based platforms that may benefit from ScanSoft's efforts. The
Microsoft .NET speech platform is a SALT-based multimodal and telephony-enabled solution for developing Web-based speech applications that
will span multiple clients including PCs, telephones, wireless personal digital assistants and next-generation laptop computers such as the Tablet
PC.
"Open standards are considered a critical component for the broad development, deployment and acceptance of multimodal applications," said
X.D. Huang, General Manager, Microsoft .NET Speech Technologies and SALT Forum representative. "Microsoft and the other SALT Forum
members are pleased to welcome ScanSoft to the organization and we look forward to the benefits their contributions and expertise will bring to
this important initiative."
ScanSoft speech solutions are used in a wide range of applications, including reading emails for unified messaging systems, providing prompts for
interactive voice response applications and adding text-to-speech capabilities to mobile, game and multimedia applications. As the use of
speech-based applications extends to non-PC and mobile devices, new types of multimodal user interactions are required.
"ScanSoft recognizes that speech-enabled, Web-based solutions will experience faster adoption if they are based on open standards," said Robert
Weideman, chief marketing officer at ScanSoft. "Tens of thousands of Microsoft developers can access speech technologies through the
Microsoft.NET speech platform. With SALT support, those developers will have access to the broad language support and industry leading
engines from ScanSoft."
About ScanSoft, Inc.
ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT) is a leading supplier of imaging, speech and language solutions that are used to automate a wide range of manual
processes - saving time, increasing worker productivity and improving customer service. For more information regarding ScanSoft products and
technologies, please visit www.ScanSoft.com.
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