Web Speech API
The Web Speech API enables you to incorporate voice data into web apps.
The Web Speech API has two parts: SpeechSynthesis (Text-to-Speech), and SpeechRecognition (Asynchronous Speech Recognition.)
Web speech concepts and usage
The Web Speech API enables web apps to handle voice data. It has two components:
- Speech recognition is accessed via the
SpeechRecognitioninterface, which provides the ability to recognize voice context from an audio source and allows your app to respond appropriately. Generally, you use the interface's constructor to create a newSpeechRecognitionobject. This object provides a number of event handlers to detect when speech is incoming from the device's microphone (or from an audio track). You can specify whether you want the speech recognition to use a service provided by the user's platform (the default) or be performed locally in the browser. - Speech synthesis is accessed via the
SpeechSynthesisinterface, a text-to-speech component that allows programs to read out their text content (normally via the device's default speech synthesizer.) Different voice types are represented bySpeechSynthesisVoiceobjects, and different parts of text that you want to be spoken are represented bySpeechSynthesisUtteranceobjects. You can get these spoken by passing them to theSpeechSynthesis.speak()method.
For more details on using these features, see Using the Web Speech API.
Web Speech API Interfaces
>Speech recognition
SpeechRecognition-
The controller interface for the recognition service; this also handles the
SpeechRecognitionEventsent from the recognition service. SpeechRecognitionAlternative-
Represents a single word that has been recognized by the speech recognition service.
SpeechRecognitionErrorEvent-
Represents error messages from the recognition service.
SpeechRecognitionEvent-
The event object for the
resultandnomatchevents, and contains all the data associated with an interim or final speech recognition result. SpeechRecognitionPhrase-
Represents a phrase that can be passed into the speech recognition engine to be used for contextual biasing.
SpeechRecognitionResult-
Represents a single recognition match, which may contain multiple
SpeechRecognitionAlternativeobjects. SpeechRecognitionResultList-
Represents a list of
SpeechRecognitionResultobjects, or a single one if results are being captured incontinuousmode.
Speech synthesis
SpeechSynthesis-
The controller interface for the speech service; this can be used to retrieve information about the synthesis voices available on the device, start and pause speech, and other commands besides.
SpeechSynthesisErrorEvent-
Contains information about any errors that occur while processing
SpeechSynthesisUtteranceobjects in the speech service. SpeechSynthesisEvent-
Contains information about the current state of
SpeechSynthesisUtteranceobjects that have been processed in the speech service. SpeechSynthesisUtterance-
Represents a speech request. It contains the content the speech service should read and information about how to read it (e.g., language, pitch and volume.)
SpeechSynthesisVoice-
Represents a voice that the system supports. Every
SpeechSynthesisVoicehas its own relative speech service including information about language, name and URI. Window.speechSynthesis-
Specified out as part of a
[NoInterfaceObject]interface calledSpeechSynthesisGetter, and Implemented by theWindowobject, thespeechSynthesisproperty provides access to theSpeechSynthesiscontroller, and therefore the entry point to speech synthesis functionality.
Deprecated interfaces
The concept of grammar has been removed from the Web Speech API. Related features remain in the specification and are still recognized by supporting browsers for backwards compatibility, but they have no effect on speech recognition services.
SpeechGrammarDeprecated-
Represents words or patterns of words for the recognition service to recognize.
SpeechGrammarListDeprecated-
Represents a list of
SpeechGrammarobjects.
Errors
For information on errors reported by the Speech API (for example, "language-not-supported" and "language-unavailable"), see the following documentation:
Security considerations
Access to the on-device speech recognition functionality of the Web Speech API is controlled by the on-device-speech-recognition Permissions-Policy directive.
Specifically, where a defined policy blocks usage, any attempts to call the API's SpeechRecognition.available() or SpeechRecognition.install() methods will fail.
Examples
Our Web Speech API examples illustrate speech recognition and synthesis.
Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| Web Speech API> # speechreco-section> |
| Web Speech API> # tts-section> |
Browser compatibility
>api.SpeechRecognition
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api.SpeechSynthesis
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