The VoiceXML Forum, an industry consortium, announced the availability of X+V (XHTML+Voice Profile) specification, version 1.2, while saying it supports the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) progress on VoiceXML 2.0.

The X+V spec brings spoken interaction to standard Web content by integrating a set of mature Web technologies such as XHTML and XML Events with VoiceXML and XML grammars developed as part of the W3C Speech Interface Framework. X+V brings together voice modules that support speech synthesis, speech dialogs, command and control, speech grammars and event model reuse.

The newest version of X+V has been updated to complement the W3C's VoiceXML 2.0 specification.

"The Forum is now the official steward of the X+V specification. We will work closely with the membership of the W3C Multimodal Interaction and Voice Browser Working Groups to continue to evolve this specification," said James Ferrans, chairman of the VoiceXML Forum's technical council and a distinguished member Motorola Labs' technical staff. More than 380 companies are members of the forum.

Also today, the W3C announced that the VoiceXML 2.0 specification has advanced to Proposed Recommendation status; the specification was published on January 28. The specification, part of the Speech Interface Framework under development, lets the user control an application using voice and a telephone, replacing the often-clumsy "for customer service, press 1" system.

VoiceXML bridges text and human speech, letting developers combine synthesized speech, digitized audio, recognition of spoken and DTMF (touch-tone) key input, recording of spoken input, telephony and mixed initiative conversations in Web- and wireless Web-based applications.

The XML-based dialog design language, originated by AT&T, was taken up by the VoiceXML Forum in 1998. The Forum publicly released VoiceXML 1.0 in 2000.