Speech JavaScript API Specification

Editor's Draft: 22 December 2011

Bjorn Bringert, Google Inc.
Satish Sampath, Google Inc.
Glen Shires, Google Inc.


This specification defines a JavaScript API to enable web developers to incorporate speech recognition and synthesis into their web pages. It enables developers to use scripting to generate text-to-speech output and to use speech recognition as an input for forms, continuous dictation and control. The JavaScript API allows web pages to control activation and timing and to handle results and alternatives

It is a fully-functional subset of the specification proposed in the HTML Speech Incubator Group Final Report [1]. Specifically, this subset excludes the underlying transport protocol, the proposed additions to HTML markup, and it defines a simplified subset of the JavaScript API. This subset supports the majority of use-cases and sample code in the Incubator Group Final Report. This subset does not preclude future standardization of additions to the markup, API or underlying transport protocols, and indeed the Incubator Report defines a potential roadmap for such future work.

Status of This Document

This document is an API proposal from Google Inc. to the Web Applications (WEBAPPS) Working Group.

All feedback is welcome.

No working group is yet responsible for this specification. This is just an informal proposal at this time.

Table of Contents

1 Conformance requirements






Implementations that use ECMAScript to implement the APIs defined in this specification must implement them in a manner consistent with the ECMAScript Bindings defined in the Web IDL specification, as this specification uses that specification's terminology. [WEBIDL]

2 Introduction

This section is non-normative.

The JavaScript Speech API aims to enable web developers to provide, in a web browser, speech-input and text-to-speech output features that are typically not available when using standard speech-recognition or screen-reader software software. The API itself is agnostic of the underlying speech recognition and synthesis implementation and can support both server-based and client-based/embedded recognition and synthesis. The API is designed to enable both brief (one-shot) speech input and continuous speech input. Speech recognition results are provided to the web page as a list of hypotheses, along with other relevant information for each hypothesis.

This specification is a subset of the API defined in the HTML Speech Incubator Group Final Report. That report is entirely informative since it is not a standards track document. This document is intended to be the basis of a standards track document, and therefore defines portions of that report to be normative. All other portions of that report may be considered informative with regards to this document, and provide an informative background to this document.

3 Use Cases

This section is non-normative.

This specification supports the following use cases, as defined in Section 4 of the Incubator Report.

To keep the API to a minimum, this specification does not directly support the following use cases. This does not preclude adding support for these as future API enhancements, and indeed the Incubator report provides a roadmap for doing so. Note that for many usages and implementations, it is possible to avoid the need for Rerecognition by using a larger grammar, or by combining multiple grammars - both of these techniques are supported in this specification.

4 Security and privacy considerations

  1. User agents must only start speech input sessions with explicit, informed user consent. User consent can include, for example:
  2. User agents must give the user an obvious indication when audio is being recorded.
  3. The user agent may also give the user a longer explanation the first time speech input is used, to let the user now what it is and how they can tune their privacy settings to disable speech recording if required.
  4. To minimize the chance of users unwittingly allowing web pages to record speech without their knowledge, implementations must abort an active speech input session if the web page lost input focus to another window or to another tab within the same user agent.

Implementation considerations

This section is non-normative.

  1. Spoken password inputs can be problematic from a security perspective, but it is up to the user to decide if they want to speak their password.
  2. Speech input could potentially be used to eavesdrop on users. Malicious webpages could use tricks such as hiding the input element or otherwise making the user believe that it has stopped recording speech while continuing to do so. They could also potentially style the input element to appear as something else and trick the user into clicking them. An example of styling the file input element can be seen at http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/inputfile.html. The above recommendations are intended to reduce this risk of such attacks.

5 API Description

This section is normative.

(The links here reference the Incubator Report, whose descriptions of these shall also be normative.)

The speech reco interface is the scripted web API for controlling a given recognition.


    interface SpeechReco {
        // recognition parameters
        SpeechGrammarList grammars;

        DOMString lang;
        attribute boolean continuous;
        // methods to drive the speech interaction
        void start();
        void stop();
        void abort();

        // event methods
        attribute Function onaudiostart;
        attribute Function onsoundstart;
        attribute Function onspeechstart;
        attribute Function onspeechend;
        attribute Function onsoundend;
        attribute Function onaudioend;
        attribute Function onresult;
        attribute Function onnomatch;
        attribute Function onresultdeleted;
        attribute Function onerror;
        attribute Function onstart;
        attribute Function onend;

    SpeechReco implements EventTarget;
    interface SpeechInputError {
        const unsigned short OTHER = 0;
        const unsigned short NO_SPEECH = 1;
        const unsigned short ABORTED = 2;
        const unsigned short AUDIO_CAPTURE = 3;
        const unsigned short NETWORK = 4;
        const unsigned short NOT_ALLOWED = 5;
        const unsigned short SERVICE_NOT_ALLOWED = 6;
        const unsigned short BAD_GRAMMAR = 7;
        const unsigned short LANGUAGE_NOT_SUPPORTED = 8;

        readonly attribute unsigned short code;
        readonly attribute DOMString message;

    // Item in N-best list
    interface SpeechInputAlternative {
        readonly attribute DOMString transcript;
        readonly attribute float confidence;
        readonly attribute any interpretation;

    // A complete one-shot simple response
    interface SpeechInputResult {
        readonly attribute unsigned long length;
        getter SpeechInputAlternative item(in unsigned long index);
        readonly attribute boolean final;

    // A collection of responses (used in continuous mode)
    interface SpeechInputResultList {
        readonly attribute unsigned long length;
        getter SpeechInputResult item(in unsigned long index);

    // A full response, which could be interim or final, part of a continuous response or not
    interface SpeechInputResultEvent : Event {
        readonly attribute SpeechInputResult result;
        readonly attribute SpeechInputError error;
        readonly attribute short resultIndex;
        readonly attribute SpeechInputResultList resultHistory;

    // The object representing a speech grammar
    interface SpeechGrammar {
        attribute DOMString src;
        attribute float weight;

    // The object representing a speech grammar collection
    interface SpeechGrammarList {
        readonly attribute unsigned long length;
        getter SpeechGrammar item(in unsigned long index);
        void addFromUri(in DOMString src,
                        optional float weight);
        void addFromString(in DOMString string,
                        optional float weight);

The TTS interface is the scripted web API for controlling a text-to-speech output.


      interface TTS {
          attribute DOMString text;
          attribute DOMString lang;
          readonly attribute boolean paused;
          readonly attribute boolean ended;

          // methods to drive the speech interaction
          void play();
          void pause();
          void stop();

          attribute Function onstart;
          attribute Function onend;

6 Examples

This section is non-normative.


Using speech recognition to perform a web search.

Web search by voice with auto-submit

  <script type="text/javascript">
    var sr = new SpeechReco();
    sr.onresult = function(event) {
      var q = document.getElementById("q");
      q.value = event.result[0].transcript;

  <form action="http://www.example.com/search">
  <input type="search" id="q" name="q">
  <input type="button" value="Speak" onclick="sr.start()">

Using speech synthesis.


  <script type="text/javascript">
     var tts = new TTS();
     function speak(text, lang) {
        tts.text = text;
        tts.lang = lang;
     speak("Hello world.", "en-US");

This API supports all of the examples in the HTML Speech Incubator Group Final Report that are within the scope of the JavaScript API and are relevant to the Section 3 Use Cases, with minimal or no changes. Specifically, the following are supported from Section 7.1.7.


The members of the HTML Speech Incubator Group, and the corresponding Final Report, created the basis for this proposal.


HTML Speech Incubator Group Final Report, World Wide Web Consortium, 6 December 2011. URL: http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/htmlspeech/XGR-htmlspeech/