The W3C Voice Browser Working Group has posted the candidate recommendaiton of
VoiceXML 2.1, an XML vocabulary
for creating audio dialogs that feature synthesized speech, digitized audio, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, recording of spoken input, telephony, and mixed initiative conversations.
According to the spec, "The popularity of VoiceXML 2.0 [VXML2] spurred the development of numerous voice browser implementations early in the specification process. [VXML2] has been phenomenally successful in enabling the rapid deployment of voice applications that handle millions of phone calls every day. This success has led to the development of additional, innovative features that help developers build even more powerful voice-activated services. While it was too late to incorporate these additional features into [VXML2], the purpose of VoiceXML 2.1 is to formally specify the most common features to ensure their portability between platforms and at the same time maintain complete backwards-compatibility with [VXML2]." New elements in VoiceXML 2.1 include data and foreach.
Comments are due by July 11.