On-device Web Speech API

[evanbliu]

Request for Mozilla Position on an Emerging Web Specification

• Specification title: On-device Web Speech API
• Specification or proposal URL (if available): Add on-device speech recognition support to the Web Speech API WebAudio/web-speech-api#122
• Explainer URL (if available): N/A
• Proposal author(s) (@-mention GitHub accounts): @evanbliu
• Caniuse.com URL (optional): N/A
• Bugzilla URL (optional): N/A
• Mozillians who can provide input (optional): @padenot
• WebKit standards-position: On-device Web Speech API WebKit/standards-positions#443

Other information

The Web Speech API is a web standard API that allows developers to incorporate speech recognition and synthesis into their web pages. Currently, the Web Speech API spec does not mention where speech recognition occurs, and most implementers of the API perform speech recognition using a cloud service. Enabling on-device speech recognition support allows websites to ensure that neither audio nor transcribed speech are sent to a third-party service for processing.

[padenot]

Thanks for filing a request.

This is positive and we're actively investigating, initially focusing on the recognition side of things.

We're following/helping upstream to dust off / draft the standard, this is for now part of the Audio Community Group, of which I am a Chair. It's possible that this gets adopted by the Audio Working Group, of which I am also a chair.