Voice Recognition and Dictation

The IBM WebSphere Voice Tool Kit appears to be a promising option for voice recognition, with its focus primarily on VoiceXML, although the download also includes a Java speech implementation. However, one major drawback is that the software is only compatible with JRE 1.3x and will not start with more recent versions.

Although the software offers support for dictation grammar, the documentation is significantly lacking, and it took me quite some time to realize that I needed to download additional ViaVoice components. To my dismay, I discovered that the IBM site shows a 404 error on the download page, and further investigations revealed that some of the free downloads are no longer available. Additionally, most of the Linux flavors have been removed, which is surprising for a company like IBM.

23 March 2023 Update: Watson is IBM's main offering in this segment now. ViaVoice has long been discontinued. Watch out for a post on Watson real soon