A new W3C markup standard for text-to-speech synthesis

A new set of XML-based markup standards developed for the purpose of enabling voice browsing of the Internet will begin emerging in 2001 from the Voice Browser working group, recently organized under the auspices of the W3C. Among the first in this series of soon-to-be-released specifications is the speech synthesis text markup standard. The Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Specification is largely based on JSML [1], but also incorporates elements and concepts from SABLE [2], a previously published text markup standards, and from VoiceXML [3], which is itself based on JSML and SABLE. SSML also includes new elements designed to optimize the capabilities of contemporary speech synthesis engines in the task of converting text into speech. This paper summarizes the markup element design philosophy and includes descriptions of each of the speech synthesis markup elements.