Spoken Language Technology can provide many of the pieces to enable the middleware vision:

• Speech is a convenient means to aACCESS information, unencumbered
• Much information is transmitted verbally: speech is also an important SOURCE of information
• newsbroadcasts
• telephone
• Speech enables greater portability, since a keyboard is not required
• Speech technology can also manage the ease of access with SECURE access via speaker verification

This figure illustrates some pieces of a solution to this user's needs

MIDDLEWARE is needed to glue these pieces together flexibly, mixing equipment, platforms, software, old and new, dynamically. The next few slides describe:

• SRI's accomplishments towards Spoken Language Systems Middleware
• Technical advances required of speech, natural language understanding and middleware
• Summary of the vision of mobile, networked, wireless, secure, convenient, robust access to information

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