PISCATAWAY, 31, MAY 2022 – In March of 2021, the VoiceXML Forum, a global industry trade

organization chartered to promote and accelerate the adoption of VoiceXML-based applications awarded two $25,000 grants to worthy recipients.

Today we are pleased to announce the progress of both, Drexel University’s Jina Huh-Yoo’s “Conversational Agent for the Caregivers of Alzheimer’s and Alzheimer’s Related Dementia Patients.” And Sorbonne University’s Catherine Pelachaud and Nicholas Obin’s “Virtual Expressive Agent.”

“The VoiceXML Forum Grant Program has carried forward the spirit of its original mission by issuing two $25,000 grants annually to researchers at non-profit institutions developing new voice technologies or standards,” Paulo Baggia of Nuance said. “Research by the 2021 grant recipients includes the design of conversational agents to support caregivers of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, and to enhance the quality of human-machine voice interactions. These examples clearly illustrate the lasting relevance and importance of the VoiceXML Forum’s mission.”

Jina Huh-Yoo notes “VoiceXML Forum Grant has allowed us to explore and test possibilities for using highly accessible, phone-based conversational agents that can help with caregivers of patients with dementia. We collaborated with experts (WeCare Advisors) who support the caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) through the WeCare program at the College of Nursing and Professions at Drexel University. We developed and tested the prototypes of automating WeCare Advisors’ work of conversing with caregivers over the phone to support the caregiving process. We found where automation can help and where it might be limited. Through this pilot work, the grant helped us to plan the next steps in identifying novel ways to support advisors’ work and the caregiving process. We will continue the work by further developing ways to record and annotate conversations among the stakeholders of individuals with ADRD using the conversational agent technology.”

Catherine Pelachaud and Nicolas Obin state, “As a part of an on-going collaboration between the Science and Technology of Sound and Music lab (STMS lab – Ircam, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Ministère de la Culture) and the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR – CNRS, Sorbonne Université), the VoiceXML Forum grant has allowed us to enhance the acoustic and visual expressivity of virtual agents controlled by the GRETA platform. We have developed models to generate expressive speech synthesis and agent animation driven by speech. The VoiceXML tags are added to the text to be said by the agent. They are sent to speech synthesizers as well as to the GRETA platform. In particular the focus is on paralinguistic fillers.”

To read more detailed progress of their work, please visit www.voicexml.org

About The VoiceXML Forum 

Founded in 1999,the VoiceXML Forum is an industry organization whose mission is to promote and to accelerate the worldwide adoption of VoiceXML-based applications. The Forum served as an educational and technical resource, a certification authority and a contributor and liaison to international standards bodies.  The VoiceXML Forum is organized as a program of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO). The Forum dissolves May 2022 after successfully achieving its mission.

Please send all media inquiries to Katherine.valenti@ieee-isto.org

PISCATAWAY, 31 MAY 2022 – After 23 years and the fulfillment of their mission, the members of The VoiceXML Forum have agreed to dissolve the organization effective 31 May 2022.

The VoiceXML Forum has accomplished much over their years of operation and has been a leading global industry organization that worked to accelerate the adoption of VoiceXML and adjacent technologies.

The VoiceXML Forum has strived to certify the conformance of VoiceXML platforms to the VoiceXML standard, helping to ensure the interoperability of VoiceXML platforms, tools, and applications. They have also collaborated with standards organizations and other industry consortia, such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the IETF.

“The VoiceXML Forum began as a small group of companies that shared a vision to improve the way voice applications are built and grew to more than 100 companies,” said Rob Marchand, Forum board member and senior director at Genesys. “Along the way, it fostered the development and adoption of open standards that would shape an entire industry. I want to thank the companies and individuals who contributed to the success over the years without whom any of this would be possible.”

Throughout their tenure, the VoiceXML Forum has created publications, best practices and use cases for application by the industry.

“The sheer number of companies and users worldwide who benefit from voice technology every day is a testament to the Forum’s success in defining and promoting VoiceXML standards over the past 20+ years,” said Paolo Baggia, VoiceXML Forum board member and director of International Standards at Nuance. “The dedicated work by Forum members enabled the creation of scores of voice-driven applications like package tracking, driving directions, voice dialing and many others that we take for granted today.”

Although the Forum is disbanding, the VoiceXML website will still stay active and will host all past work product – /

“The value of the VoiceXML Forum goes far beyond the standards development and testing its members performed,” said Baggia. “While the active work winds down, the Forum’s technical resources and publications will continue to be available on the VoiceXML website to inform current and future development of new conversational AI applications for cybersecurity, healthcare, customer service and other areas.”

About The VoiceXML Forum 

Founded in 1999, the VoiceXML Forum is an industry organization whose mission is to promote and to accelerate the worldwide adoption of VoiceXML-based applications. The Forum served as an educational and technical resource, a certification authority and a contributor and liaison to international standards bodies.  The VoiceXML Forum is organized as a program of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization(IEEE-ISTO). The Forum dissolved in May 2022 after successfully achieving its mission.

The first award will go to Jina Huh-Yoo, Assistant Professor at Drexel University for her proposal “VoiceXML-based Conversational Agent for the Caregivers of Alzheimer’s and Alzheimer’s Related Dementia Patients.” This grant will fund the ability to design and evaluate a phone-based conversational agent that will support caregivers to confidently seek tailored strategies on caregiving for people living with these types of disabilities through iterative conversations with the agent.

VoiceXML Board Member Paolo Baggia of Nuance Communications said, “After twenty years, VoiceXML standard infrastructures are still a pillar of Conversational Agent creation. The development of relevant and useful VoiceXML innovations, such as Professor Huh-Yoo’s caregiver assistance application, continue to make a difference in our world.”

The second award will go to Catherine Pelachaud, Director of Research from Sorbonne University & Nicholas Obin, Associate Professor, Ircam – Sorbonne University for their proposal “Virtual Expressive Agent.” This agent will attempt to enhance the quality of the interaction of the human experience between human and machine by synthesizing modalities of expression through gestures, as well as speech prosody.

Dr. Valentine Matula, Board Member with Avaya, noted that “The Virtual Expressive Agent project has a goal of capturing, specifying, and then recreating expressive aspects of human communication via extended markup languages. This clearly expands on the goals of the original VoiceXML effort–and thus was seen as deserving of the VoiceXML Forum’s support via this grant.”

In addition, Board Member Rob Marchand of Genesys, noted that “The VoiceXML Forum is pleased to contribute to continued exploration of innovative voice related technologies and applications through the award of these grants in support of the two selected proposals.”

The VoiceXML Forum congratulates all winners on this achievement.

About the VoiceXML Forum

Founded in 1999, the VoiceXML Forum is an industry organization whose mission is to promote and to accelerate the worldwide adoption of VoiceXML-based applications. The Forum serves as an educational and technical resource, a certification authority and a contributor and liaison to international standards bodies, such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) IETF, ANSI and ISO. The VoiceXML Forum is organized as a program of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO). Membership in the Forum is open to any interested company. For more information, please visit the Website at www.voicexml.org.

Please send all media inquiries to Katherine.valenti@ieee-isto.org  

The VoiceXML Forum will issue two separate $25,000 grants to an individual, or group of individuals affiliated with a not-for-profit institution for an initiative or alliance championing new technology or standards in the area of Voice Technology that continues to display the spirit of the VoiceXML Forum’s original mission.

“We are excited to be able to solicit grant proposals from active research individuals or teams for their groundbreaking work in voice technology and/or its standards. With the ability to fund two separate grants, we believe we will be able to help two programs move forward in their research endeavors,” said VoiceXML Forum Board Member Dr. Valentine Matula of Avaya.

The VoiceXML Grant Program is now open for proposal submissions, and will remain open through December 31, 2020. All interested parties can submit proposals for consideration here: www.voicexml.org/grant

“When the Forum started to promote VoiceXML, the voice adoption was in its infancy. Today, with the advent of the standards, it is widely used in our lives, and it will continue to evolve in the future,” said VoiceXML Forum Board Member Paolo Baggia of Nuance Communications, Inc.

In addition, Board Member Robert Marchand of Genesys noted that “The VoiceXML Forum is thrilled to continue to support the development of open standards related to voice technologies. The success of VoiceXML and related standards is largely due to efforts and contributions from the educational and research communities.”

About the VoiceXML Forum

Founded in 1999, the VoiceXML Forum is an industry organization whose mission is to promote and to accelerate the worldwide adoption of VoiceXML-based applications. The Forum serves as an educational and technical resource, a certification authority and a contributor and liaison to international standards bodies, such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) IETF, ANSI and ISO. The VoiceXML Forum is organized as a program of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO). Membership in the Forum is open to any interested company. For more information, please visit the Website at www.voicexml.org.

Rome, December 5, 2016: Interactive Media today announced that VXML_NG 7.2.6, the VXML interpreter part of IM Media Server, the VoiceXML platform used for its Conversational and Multimodal IVR Solutions, successfully passed conformance testing of VoiceXML Forum Platform Certification Program for VoiceXML 2.1, getting the award of a VoiceXML Forum Certified Platform. The VoiceXML Forum, an industry organization whose mission is to support proliferation of VoiceXML implementation and adoption to promote interoperability within the industry, certified the IM implementation of VoiceXML 2.1 standard through testing by Surgent Networks, an independent thirdparty compliance consultant. The certification of IVR (interactive voice response) platforms as VoiceXML 2.1 compliant helps enterprises to choose the right investment in an IVR platform.

Interactive Media has been since the beginning among the early adopters of industry standards, and now is the only European company to have this certification award for VoiceXML 2.1 IVR platforms.

Our Clients deliver excellent performance, return on investment and customer experience using IM Conversational and Multimodal IVR. We provide an open, standards based environment with access to the most up-to-date technologies and the greatest flexibility and investment protection for the future.

Enterprises that use or want to have VoiceXML 2.1 compliant IVR platforms can easily migrate from their existing applications to IM IVR VoiceXML compliant platform. Certified VoiceXML 2.1 compliant IVR platforms allow enterprises to invest in application excellence without worrying when switching from an on premise solution to a hosted solution, or changing IVR vendor.

Headquartered in Rome (Italy), Interactive Media provides Customer Self Service Solutions based on Virtual Conversational Assistants. Main Solutions include Conversational IVR, Call Steering, Visual IVR and Speech Analysis. IM Natural Language applications on voice and text channels use the IM.MIND – Multimodal Interactive Natural Dialog – framework that delivers VoiceXML, XML and HTML scripts.

The Forum’s new Board of Directors is comprised of Voxeo, Dan Burnett (Chair); Avaya, Inc. Val Matula (Vice-Chair); West Interactive Corporation, Bruce Pollock (Treasurer); Nuance, Paolo Baggia and Genesys, Rob Marchand.

“Each of the members elected onto the Board today brings a unique perspective and direction to the VoiceXML Forum,” says newly appointed Forum Chair, Dan Burnett. “The Executive team looks forward to helping guide the organization as it moves forward with its goals and initiatives over the next twelve months.”

The Forum has established its agenda for the 2012-2013 period which is to promote and expand its platform and developer certification programs; continue to provide technical guidance to the Forum’s membership regarding VoiceXML and related technologies; advocate new technical initiatives to effectively engage and support its diverse membership community; maintain and enhance its cooperative relationships with the W3C and industry consortia; and support educational programs.

“It’s been more than ten years since the VoiceXML standard was introduced, and its relevance to the industry is still key,” continued Burnett. “There are still many organizations yet to migrate their legacy IVR systems to VoiceXML-certified platforms. Businesses looking to remain competitive alongside leaders in IVR and Internet technologies need to embrace VoiceXML-certified platforms for IVR application development.”

About the VoiceXML Forum

Founded in 1999, the VoiceXML Forum is an industry organization whose mission is to promote and to accelerate the worldwide adoption of VoiceXML-based applications. The Forum serves as an educational and technical resource, a certification authority and a contributor and liaison to international standards bodies, such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) IETF, ANSI and ISO. The VoiceXML Forum is organized as a program of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO). Membership in the Forum is open to any interested company. For more information, please visit the Website at www.voicexml.org.

“We are delighted to have an industry leader like Dan as part of the VoiceXML Forum’s Board of Directors,” says Forum Chair Bruce Pollock. “His extensive technology experience and knowledge of the industry makes Dan an ideal fit for the organization,” Pollock adds.

The Forum’s new Board of Directors is comprised of West Interactive Corporation, Bruce Pollock (Chair); Genesys Telecommunication Laboratories, Rob Marchand (Vice-Chair); Avaya, Inc. Val Matula,(Treasurer); Loquendo, Paolo Baggia and Nuance, Kevin Chatow.

“The decision by the above-mentioned companies to participate at the Board level demonstrates the tremendous industry support behind the VoiceXML Forum and the importance of VoiceXML,” says new Forum Chair Bruce Pollock.

The VoiceXML Forum also announced today that five companies have had their VoiceXML platforms successfully certified to the latest release of the Forum’s VoiceXML 2.1 test suite. These companies include ATS Advanced Technology Solutions [IVR Center 4.0.0.0], Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories [Genesys 8.1.1], Loquendo [VoxNauta 7.1], Nuance Communications [Nuance 4.0 SP1] and West Interactive [Holly 5.0]. Additional testers are in the queue.

“VoiceXML Certification promotes cross-vendor interoperability of platforms, tools and applications, which stabilizes and matures the industry,” continued Pollock. “This increases confidence that a wide variety of VoiceXML-certified platforms are sound speech technology investments.”

Pollock added, “Looking to the future, The VoiceXML Forum is currently working on several new technical initiatives, including a developer testing program and other targeted activities.”

About The VoiceXML Platform Certification Program

The VoiceXML Platform Certification Program test suite includes more than one hundred tests that cover the W3C VoiceXML 2.1 Recommendation and is based on the W3C’s VoiceXML 2.1 Implementation Report. To aid vendors in preparing for certification, the Conformance Test Suite in the VoiceXML Platform Certification Program is available, at no charge, for public download from the Forum’s website at www.voicexml.org.

About the VoiceXML Forum

Founded in 1999, the VoiceXML Forum is an industry organization whose mission is to promote and to accelerate the worldwide adoption of VoiceXML-based applications. The Forum serves as an educational and technical resource, a certification authority and a contributor and liaison to international standards bodies, such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) IETF, ANSI and ISO. The VoiceXML Forum is organized as a program of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO). Membership in the Forum is open to any interested company. For more information, please visit the Website at www.voicexml.org.

Interoperability is a primary objective of VoiceXML standards, benefiting both customers, who are afforded more freedom to choose standard-based platforms, and vendors who gain access to more customers. Interoperability is not, however, assured by the existence of the standard alone. A test program that certifies platform conformance to the standard is critical. The VoiceXML Forum’s Platform Certification Program provides for that vendor independent, industry-standard certification that will support all members of the VoiceXML ecosystem.

“Certification provides a new level of vendor differentiation on the VoiceXML platform level,” said Daniel Hong, Lead Analyst of Customer Interaction at Ovum (www.ovum.com). “It is no longer a question of VoiceXML or traditional IVR. Two years have passed since the market has witnessed the inflection point where VoiceXML licenses eclipsed that of proprietary IVR systems. As we roll out the tape over the next couple of years, enterprises need to evaluate platform interoperability and monitoring and analytics capabilities, in addition to performance, to choose an IVR platform that effectively meets changing business needs, while protecting investments.”

The VoiceXML 2.1 Platform Certification Program

The VoiceXML Forum’s 2.1 Platform Certification Program consists of a conformance test suite, which is a collection of test scripts based on the W3C Implementation Reports for the relevant VoiceXML standards. The program also has a test harness, which facilitates testing a platform against the scripts in the conformance test suite. The conformance test suite and the test harness were designed by the Promoter and Sponsor level members of the VoiceXML Forum, but are now publicly available. During the certification process, the target platform is tested against the conformance test suite by an independent third-party test lab.

The previous version of the conformance test suite covered the VoiceXML 2.0 Recommendation. To date, 26 VoiceXML platforms, including offerings from nearly all of the leading vendors, have been certified in the VoiceXML 2.0 certification program. The VoiceXML 2.1 platform certification program enhances the 2.0 program in a number of important ways:

• The 2.1 conformance suite covers VoiceXML 2.0, Speech Recognition Grammar Standard (SRGS) 1.0, VoiceXML 2.1, and a small subset of Speech Interpretation for Speech Recognition (SISR) 1.0.
• In addition to adding tests for SRGS 1.0 conformance, the 2.1 test harness now mandates the use of SRGS 1.0 and SISR 1.0 in all test scripts, including those in the VoiceXML 2.0 module.
• The 2.1 conformance suite consists of three modules: one for VoiceXML 2.0, one for SRGS 1.0, and one for VoiceXML 2.1. Vendors may choose to certify against any set of modules.

Broad industry support for the VoiceXML 2.1 Platform certification program

Newfound Communications (www.newfoundcomm.net) is an independent, third-party test lab that has been contracted by the VoiceXML Forum to perform the platform testing. The test lab will support testing of platforms shipped to their lab, or remotely from a hosted platform. This additional remote testing option now allows vendors of hosted services to certify their platforms as well.

The 2.1 Platform Certification Program recently concluded its pilot test phase in which several VoiceXML Forum members successfully certified their platforms against VoiceXML 2.1, SRGS 1.0 and SISR 1.0 conformance tests. Nuance Communications (www.nuance.com), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, certified the release 4.0 SP1 of Nuance Voice Platform, the platform underlying the Nuance OnDemand hosting environment. Loquendo (www.loquendo.com), a global speech technology provider, certified release 7.1 of VoxNauta, the platform supporting most of Telecom Italia’s voice-based services. Genesys (www.genesys.com), an Alcatel Lucent company, certified their Genesys Voice Portal release 8.1.1 platform.

Dr. Valentine Matula of Avaya, VoiceXML Forum Chair, said, “Platform certification is one of VoiceXML Forum’s primary responsibilities towards the industry. It is a service designed by the VoiceXML Forum members, for all the members of the speech recognition and IVR industries. We encourage all platform vendors to seek VoiceXML2.1 compliance certification for their platforms and hosted services.”

The VoiceXML 2.1 Platform Certification Program is now available to the industry. Fees for the program start at $20,000 USD, with discounts available to VoiceXML Forum members, and to companies that have previously certified a platform.

About the VoiceXML Forum

Founded in 1999, the VoiceXML Forum is an industry organization whose mission is to promote and to accelerate the worldwide adoption of VoiceXML and adjacent technologies. As the world’s leading VoiceXML advocate, the VoiceXML Forum works to certify VoiceXML platforms, to collaborate with standards organizations, and to create publications, including requirements, best practices, and use cases. The Forum’s mission is to make it easier to understand, develop, deploy, and experience VoiceXML applications. Membership in the Forum is open to any interested company. Current members include leading organizations from the speech, telecommunications, mobile and wireless, and information technology industries. For information, please visit .

“We are pleased to welcome Avaya and Convergys to the Board of Directors,” said Rob Marchand, Chair of the VoiceXML Forum. “Forum members will benefit from the insights, experience and industry thought leadership these two leading companies bring to the table. Having Avaya and Convergys join our Board is a great way to celebrate our tenth anniversary. Additionally, active participation by these companies will provide them with a wide range of valuable market leadership, educational, and promotional benefits and opportunities,” Marchand added.

VoiceXML Forum and AVIOS Announce Collaboration

In addition to welcoming new Sponsor Members Avaya and Convergys, the VoiceXML Forum also announced that it is broadening its scope of activities and opportunities for member involvement.

Today, the VoiceXML Forum is announcing a collaborative initiative with the Applied Voice Input/Output Society (AVIOS), a non-profit foundation dedicated to education about the practical applications of advanced speech technology. Working together, the VoiceXML Forum and AVIOS will pursue a range of educational and marketing activities to promote speech technology, applications, services, and related standards. More details on specific initiatives under this partnership will be announced over the next few months.

“AVIOS has played an integral role in growing the speech industry and providing excellent educational opportunities for speech practitioners. We look forward to working with them on educational and other initiatives,” said VoiceXML Forum Chairman Rob Marchand.

“We are delighted to be working with the VoiceXML Forum on industry growth and educational initiatives,” said Bill Scholz, President of AVIOS. “Our two organizations have complementary goals, and this exciting industry development will allow us to leverage the strengths of both entities for the good of the industry.”

VoiceXML Forum Celebrates its 10-Year Anniversary, as the IVR Industry crosses the inflection point in standards-based VoiceXML port shipment

This year, the VoiceXML Forum is also celebrating its 10 year anniversary. “The Forum has long been on the forefront of technology advancement in the speech and IVR industries. Ten years ago this month, the Forum initiated the revolution of web-based speech and cloud-based telephony services with the publication of the first draft of VoiceXML standards. Since then, VoiceXML has become a globally-accepted standard through collaboration with the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) and broad industry adoption,” said Ken Rehor VoiceXML Forum Board Member, co founder and co-author of the VoiceXML standards.

“Opus Research estimates that businesses will spend roughly $2 billion on speech applications, platforms and services in 2009,” said Dan Miller, Opus Senior Analyst. “Web architectures and developer-friendly standards like VoiceXML have helped a new generation of developers re-discover the phone. None of this would be possible without the existence of a standard mark-up language for speech like VoiceXML and Call Control XML. That’s why we see spending growing to $3.25 billion by 2013, with lots of opportunity for both application developers and system integrators to make the phone more web-like in terms of the services that it can deliver.”

According to another senior industry analyst Dan Hong of Datamonitor, “2008 was the inflection point where VoiceXML ports shipped eclipsed that of traditional IVR. The question is no longer if an enterprise will make the move to VoiceXML, but when.”

About the VoiceXML Forum

Founded in 1999, the VoiceXML Forum is an industry organization whose mission is to promote and to accelerate the worldwide adoption of VoiceXML and adjacent technologies. As the world’s leading VoiceXML advocate, the VoiceXML Forum works to certify VoiceXML platforms, to collaborate with standards organizations, and to create publications, including requirements, best practices, and use cases. The Forum’s core mission continues to make it easier to develop, deploy, and experience VoiceXML applications. Membership in the Forum is open to any interested company. Current members include leading organizations from the speech, telecommunications, mobile and wireless, and information technology industries. For information, please visit .

About AVIOS

AVIOS is a non-profit speech technology professional society dedicated to informing and educating the speech community through information distribution and training opportunities and to highlighting real world applications of speech technology. For information, please visit http://www.avios.org.