ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
Human Factors (HF); User Interfaces; Generic spoken command vocabulary for ICT devices and services
Human Factors (HF); User Interfaces; Generic spoken command vocabulary for ICT devices and services
RES/HF-00081
Človeški dejavniki (HF) - Uporabniški vmesniki - Splošni slovar govorjenih ukazov za naprave in storitve IKT
General Information
Buy Standard
Standards Content (Sample)
ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
ETSI Standard
Human Factors (HF);
User Interfaces;
Generic spoken command vocabulary
for ICT devices and services
---------------------- Page: 1 ----------------------
2 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
Reference
RES/HF-00081
Keywords
ICT, interface, speech, telephony, voice, user
ETSI
650 Route des Lucioles
F-06921 Sophia Antipolis Cedex - FRANCE
Tel.: +33 4 92 94 42 00 Fax: +33 4 93 65 47 16
Siret N° 348 623 562 00017 - NAF 742 C
Association à but non lucratif enregistrée à la
Sous-Préfecture de Grasse (06) N° 7803/88
Important notice
Individual copies of the present document can be downloaded from:
http://www.etsi.org
The present document may be made available in more than one electronic version or in print. In any case of existing or
perceived difference in contents between such versions, the reference version is the Portable Document Format (PDF).
In case of dispute, the reference shall be the printing on ETSI printers of the PDF version kept on a specific network drive
within ETSI Secretariat.
Users of the present document should be aware that the document may be subject to revision or change of status.
Information on the current status of this and other ETSI documents is available at
http://portal.etsi.org/tb/status/status.asp
If you find errors in the present document, please send your comment to one of the following services:
http://portal.etsi.org/chaircor/ETSI_support.asp
Copyright Notification
No part may be reproduced except as authorized by written permission.
The copyright and the foregoing restriction extend to reproduction in all media.
© European Telecommunications Standards Institute 2009.
All rights reserved.
TM TM TM TM
DECT , PLUGTESTS , UMTS , TIPHON , the TIPHON logo and the ETSI logo are Trade Marks of ETSI registered
for the benefit of its Members.
TM
3GPP is a Trade Mark of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members and of the 3GPP Organizational Partners.
LTE™ is a Trade Mark of ETSI currently being registered
for the benefit of its Members and of the 3GPP Organizational Partners.
GSM® and the GSM logo are Trade Marks registered and owned by the GSM Association.
ETSI
---------------------- Page: 2 ----------------------
3 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
Contents
Intellectual Property Rights . 4
Foreword . 4
Introduction . 4
1 Scope . 6
2 References . 6
2.1 Normative references . 6
2.2 Informative references . 7
3 Definitions and abbreviations . 7
3.1 Definitions . 7
3.2 Abbreviations . 8
4 User requirements . 8
5 Method . 9
5.1 General . 9
5.2 Elicitation of command candidates. 9
5.3 Validation of command candidates . 10
5.4 Phonetic discriminability . 10
5.5 Final command definition . 10
6 List of commands . 11
6.1 Principles of use . 11
6.2 Basic commands . 12
6.3 Digits . 17
6.4 Communication commands . 20
6.5 Commands for the control of and navigation in media . 27
6.6 Commands for device and service settings . 33
Annex A (informative): Methodology for defining command vocabularies . 40
A.1 Elicitation: the spontaneous generation of potential command words . 40
A.1.1 Interviewers . 41
A.1.2 Test participants . 41
A.1.3 Set of functions . 41
A.1.4 Carefully Worded Descriptions (CWDs) . 41
A.1.5 Interviews . 42
A.1.6 Data Cleaning . 42
A.1.7 Frequency Analysis . 42
A.2 Validation . 42
A.3 Phonetic discriminability . 43
A.4 Final command definition . 44
Annex B (informative): Bibliography . 45
History . 46
ETSI
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4 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
Intellectual Property Rights
IPRs essential or potentially essential to the present document may have been declared to ETSI. The information
pertaining to these essential IPRs, if any, is publicly available for ETSI members and non-members, and can be found
in ETSI SR 000 314: "Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); Essential, or potentially Essential, IPRs notified to ETSI in
respect of ETSI standards", which is available from the ETSI Secretariat. Latest updates are available on the ETSI Web
server (http://webapp.etsi.org/IPR/home.asp).
Pursuant to the ETSI IPR Policy, no investigation, including IPR searches, has been carried out by ETSI. No guarantee
can be given as to the existence of other IPRs not referenced in ETSI SR 000 314 (or the updates on the ETSI Web
server) which are, or may be, or may become, essential to the present document.
Foreword
This ETSI Standard (ES) has been produced by ETSI Technical Committee Human Factors (HF).
The work has been conducted in collaboration with industry. The present document is based upon user testing,
empirical data, phonetic discriminability analysis, expert knowledge, and an industry-consultation and consensus
process, aimed at a quick uptake and the widest possible support in product implementations to come.
Intended readers of the present document are:
• terminal manufacturers;
• service providers;
• network operators;
• manufacturers of multilingual speech recognizers;
• standards developers;
• software and user interface developers.
Introduction
Telecommunications, converging with information processing, and intersecting with mobility and the internet, are
leading to the development of new interactive applications and services, offering global access.
A technology enabling a natural user interaction with these (often complex) systems and services is speech recognition.
In recent years, speech recognition has become commercially viable in off-the-shelf ICT (Information and
Communication Technology) devices and services. Just as the graphical user interface changed the way we interact with
personal computers, so voice user interfaces are changing the way we interact with ICT devices and services.
Voice is fundamental to human communication and forms an important channel for universal access to ICT services.
Voice user interfaces are a terminal, display and potentially location-independent user interface technology, enabled by
speech recognition technologies. In order to simplify the user's learning and facilitate reuse of knowledge for the control
of different applications and devices, it is desirable to standardize voice commands for the most common and generic
functions. This standardization activity also meets one of the most important principles of the eEurope 2005 Action
Plan; that of design for all. This theme has been continued by the new EU initiative; the i2010 Action Plan. This will
help ensure that those with special needs such as elderly people, people with visual and other impairments, as well as
young children will benefit from a generic spoken command vocabulary. As the standard necessarily addresses speech
input it is recommended that the users of the present document provide some form of guidance for those end users who
may have a speech impediment.
ETSI
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5 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
The present document is a timely contribution to enable the deployment of speech recognition in services and devices,
offering multi-lingual voice user interfaces. Thereby it will minimize learning effort, facilitate knowledge transfer and
develop user trust. Uniformity in the basic spoken commands improves the overall usability of the entire interactive
environment, which becomes increasingly important in a world of ubiquitous devices and services using speech
recognition.
The minimum generic set of spoken commands in the present document has been developed with a combined
methodology, including the collection of data from native speakers of the 30 languages covered by the present
document (see annex A for details). Therefore, it supports developers of ICT devices and services, leading to quicker,
more consistent, cheaper, and better user interface development.
The work is aligned with, and co-funded by, the European Commission's initiative eEurope, a programme for inclusive
deployment of new, important, consumer-oriented technologies, opening up global access to communications and other
new technologies, for all [2].
ETSI
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6 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
1 Scope
The present document specifies a minimum set of spoken commands required to control the generic and common
functions of ICT devices and services that use speaker-independent speech recognition. It specifies the necessary and
most common vocabularies for voice commands to be supported by ICT devices and services.
The present document is applicable to the functions required for user interface navigation, call handling, the control of
and navigation in media, and management of device and service settings.
The present document specifies commands for the official languages (at the time of publication) of the European Union
(EU) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries, and for Russian. The standard addresses Bulgarian,
Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish,
Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Raeto-Romance, Romanian,
Russian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish [4]. Therefore, this updates the existing standard,
ES 202 076 [1], which covers only the five languages with the largest number of native speakers in the European
Union: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. The present document does not cover dialects with the exception
of Norwegian and Raeto Romance both of which have established dialects. All languages are addressed in "Received
Pronunciation".
The present document does not cover dialogue design issues, the full range of supplementary telecommunications
services, performance-related issues or speech output. Alphanumeric characters and symbols are not covered with the
exception of single digits and language-specific reference to two recurring digits (e.g. "Double Two").
2 References
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific.
• For a specific reference, subsequent revisions do not apply.
• Non-specific reference may be made only to a complete document or a part thereof and only in the following
cases:
- if it is accepted that it will be possible to use all future changes of the referenced document for the
purposes of the referring document;
- for informative references.
Referenced documents which are not found to be publicly available in the expected location might be found at
http://docbox.etsi.org/Reference.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
2.1 Normative references
The following referenced documents are indispensable for the application of the present document. For dated
references, only the edition cited applies. For non-specific references, the latest edition of the referenced document
(including any amendments) applies.
[1] ETSI ES 202 076 (V1.1.2): "Human Factors (HF) ; User Interfaces; Generic spoken command
vocabulary for ICT devices and services".
[2] i2010 - A European Information Society for growth and employment.
NOTE: Available at http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/index_en.htm.
[3] ITU-T Recommendation I.210 (1993): "principles of telecommunications services supported by an
ISDN and the means to describe them".
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7 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
[4] Languages of Europe - The Official EU languages.
NOTE: Available at http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/languages/index_en.html.
[5] ISO 9241-11 (1998): "Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals
(VDTs) - Part 11: guidance on usability".
2.2 Informative references
The following referenced documents are not essential to the use of the present document but they assist the user with
regard to a particular subject area. For non-specific references, the latest version of the referenced document (including
any amendments) applies.
[i.1] ETSI EG 201 013: "Human Factors (HF); Definitions, abbreviations and symbols".
[i.2] ETSI TR 102 068: "Human Factors (HF); Requirements for assistive technology devices in ICT".
[i.3] ETSI EG 202 048: "Human Factors (HF); Guidelines on the multimodality of icons, symbols and
pictograms".
3 Definitions and abbreviations
3.1 Definitions
For the purposes of the present document, the terms and definitions given in EG 201 013 [i.1] and the following apply:
basic command: employed frequently across a wide range of applications
design for all: design of products to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for
specialized adaptation
dialogue: series of exchanges between the user and a system
function: abstract concept of a particular use of or operation in a device or service
hot word: See keyword.
ICT devices and services: devices or services for processing information and/or supporting communication, which
have an interface to communicate with a user
impairment: reduction or loss of psychological, physiological or anatomical function or structure of a user
(environmental included)
keyword: word that the speech recognition system is looking for in word spotting mode
magic word: See keyword.
menu: list of choices from which a selection can be made
NOTE: A menu dialogue offers a user a series of lists of choices from which a series of selections can be made.
The result from any one selection may be another menu.
phonetic discriminability: ability to discriminate between words based on the analysis of their constituent phones
spoken command: verbal or other auditory dialogue format which enables the user to input commands to control a
device or service
supplementary service: additional service that modifies or supplements a basic telecommunication service
NOTE: Consequently, it cannot be offered to a customer as a stand-alone service; it has to be offered in
association with a basic telecommunication service. The same supplementary service may be common to
a number of basic telecommunication services. See ITU-T Recommendation I.210 [3].
ETSI
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8 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
usability: effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular
environments (see ISO 9241-11 [5])
user: person who interacts with a product (see ISO 9241-11 [5])
user interface: elements of a product used to control it and receive information about its status, and the interaction that
enables the user to use it for its intended purpose
user requirements: requirements made by users, based on their needs and capabilities, in order to make use of a
product in the easiest, safest, most efficient and most secure way
word spotting mode: special state of the recognition system in which no speech is recognized or processed other than a
limited set of keywords
NOTE: A typical usage is in a dormant state of the speech recognizer, where issuing a "wake up" command (also
known as hot-word or keyword) can reactivate speech functionality.
3.2 Abbreviations
For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations apply:
ASR Automatic Speech Recognition
CWD Carefully Worded Description
EFTA European Free Trade Association
EU European Union
GPS Global Positioning System
ICT Information and Communication Technology
NLA Native Language Assistant
UCU University College Utrecht
4 User requirements
Intended users of the present document are those designing, developing, implementing and deploying ICT devices and
services with a speech user interface.
Intended end users mentioned in the present document are people who use ICT devices and services with a speech
interface, ranging from first time users to experienced power users.
Uniformity in the interactive elements increases the transfer of learning between different devices and services. Such
knowledge transfer becomes even more important in a world of ubiquitous devices and services using speech
recognition technology. In particular standardized commands improve the overall usability of the entire interactive
environment. Use of the generic vocabulary of spoken commands in the present document for the development of ICT
devices and services will enable end users to reapply knowledge and experience.
A generic spoken command vocabulary will particularly benefit some end users with temporary or permanent additional
needs, such as those with literacy difficulties, people with visual or cognitive impairments, those with an impaired
ability to perceive tactile stimuli, and people with limited dexterity.
For further guidance, including specifics of user impairments and resulting disabilities, assistive technologies, design
for all and multi-modal interfaces, see TR 102 068 [i.2] and EG 202 048 [i.3].
Ideally, a spoken command vocabulary should be intuitive, easy to learn, memorable, natural, and unambiguous. A
well-designed speech interface should:
• have a shallow learning curve;
• execute most common tasks;
• the ability to handle the vagaries of speech recognizers in a reliable and predictable way, maximizing the user
experience.
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9 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
Adequate feedback should be provided to users indicating, where applicable, that a command cannot be executed when
requested. Three examples are:
• When a function is not supported.
• When the function is currently not available.
• When the command is not understood.
5 Method
5.1 General
In order to meet the requirements stated in clause 4, where the standard is designed for a wide range of end users, an
empirical method has been employed for the elicitation and validation of potential voice commands. Native speakers of
the 30 languages were sampled for this data collection. The previous standard used an online method of data collection
where respondents were asked to complete a questionnaire. This worked well for the five most frequently spoken
languages of the EU. However, the extension of the standard covers countries where internet penetration is relatively
low and online questionnaires for these countries would not yield a representative sample of users for the purposes of
inclusion.
In addition to elicitation and validation, a procedure of phonetic discriminability has been applied to the candidate
commands to ensure minimal confusion with commands that are likely to be simultaneously available.
The employed method consists of three phases:
• Phase 1: Elicitation of command candidates;
• Phase 2: Validation of command candidates;
• Phase 3: Phonetic discriminability.
These phases are outlined here. More detailed descriptions of each phase can be found in annex A.
5.2 Elicitation of command candidates
In this phase, a sample of native speakers representing three age groups, aiming for an equal distribution of men and
women, were invited to take part in an interview on voice commands. At this stage, they were given some general
background to the aims of the study in order to inform them of the aims of the study prior to gaining their consent to
participating in the research. In most cases the interview was conducted by telephone but, in a small number of cases, an
interview was conducted with interviewer and interviewee sitting back to back in order to prevent artefacts based on the
interviewer's reactions. The interviewer, or Native Language Assistant (NLA), was also always a native or near-native
speaker who also carried out translations and transcriptions from documents in the original English and conducted
analyses. They read out, for each command, a phrase describing the function of the device or service, known as the
Carefully Worded Description (CWD), without mentioning any of the most likely resulting terms. The interviewees
were then asked to name the term or terms they would find most suitable as a command in the context of a spoken-
command supported device or service.
EXAMPLE: The carefully worded description used for describing the supplementary service "Call deflection"
was: "You hear the phone ring at a time when you do not want to speak to anyone. You want the
connection to be passed on to another name or number instead. What command would you give
before saying this name or number?".
From this process a number of different alternative command candidates were collected. The lists of terms were then
processed in order to reduce the number of morphological forms, e.g. infinitive or imperative, singular or plural, formal
or informal addressing. The data were also checked for typological errors and answers which did not reflect the function
implied by the carefully worded descriptions. The resulting terms were ordered according to the percentage of
participants who had named them, and the most frequently chosen terms were used as input to the validation phase.
ETSI
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10 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
5.3 Validation of command candidates
In identifying the appropriate spoken commands it is not sufficient to conduct elicitation alone. It was also necessary to
rank the proposed terms in order to provide a degree of validation. Therefore, validation interviews were set up and
carried out in a similar way to elicitation interviews where the candidate commands were ranked in order of preference
by the participants (see clause A.2). The top-ranked commands were then put forward to the phonetic discriminability
phase.
The method described here was applied to the majority of the languages. However, it became clear that this method
was an unnecessary use of resources as the same result could be obtained by subjecting the results from discrimination
to expert analysis. Therefore, (see clause A.2), expert analysis was applied to those languages which had not undergone
validation, namely: Estonian, Greek, Icelandic, Latvian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Raeto-Romance, Swedish,
and Turkish to identify the spoken commands which were chosen for phase 3, phonetic discriminability. The experts
comprised a combination of: the NLAs, industry experts, linguistic and cultural representatives from the countries
involved, and Human Factors experts.
5.4 Phonetic discriminability
Whilst the previous two steps have provided a user-centric approach to the selection of command words, it is still
important to address technology issues.
EXAMPLE: A selection of words may be chosen as a result of the previous two phases that have a high level of
agreement across the user group.
However, if this selection gives rise to a high degree of confusability in the speech recognizer, between words which are
available for use in the same context, then the overall goal of usability is nullified. Therefore, discriminability analysis
was carried out to ensure that command words that are likely to be active simultaneously in a dialogue context can be
recognized correctly by the speech recognition system.
The approach consisted of the following steps:
a) Commands were clustered according to those which would be simultaneously available, e.g. all commands for
functions related to the handling of phone calls.
b) For each context, the top three commands from validation were assessed by native-language experts with
respect to their sounds and not to their orthographic forms. Commands were listed as potentially phonetically
confusable if:
- they share the same initial consonant or consonant cluster;
- they share similar stressed vowels;
- they rhyme;
- they are of equal length.
c) Commands that give rise to possible phonetic confusion were collated.
d) An alternative for one of the command words was chosen, with minimum repercussion with respect to the
ranking of candidates.
5.5 Final command definition
The final pass on the resulting command set was performed by submitting the results to a number of different groups for
verification. These were:
• Educated native speakers to ensure consistency within the entire language set in terms of morphological and
other characteristics.
• The NLAs, who were all native speakers of the languages they assisted with.
• Cultural and linguistic institutes of each of the languages represented in the standard.
ETSI
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11 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
• The industry reference group. This is a body of experts from industry, such as service providers and handset
manufacturers, who would be responsible for the implementation of the standard in some or all of the countries
involved.
• Experts in the design of ICT products and service
...
Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
ETSI Standard
Human Factors (HF);
User Interfaces;
Generic spoken command vocabulary
for ICT devices and services
---------------------- Page: 1 ----------------------
2 Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
Reference
RES/HF-00081
Keywords
ICT, interface, speech, telephony, voice, user
ETSI
650 Route des Lucioles
F-06921 Sophia Antipolis Cedex - FRANCE
Tel.: +33 4 92 94 42 00 Fax: +33 4 93 65 47 16
Siret N° 348 623 562 00017 - NAF 742 C
Association à but non lucratif enregistrée à la
Sous-Préfecture de Grasse (06) N° 7803/88
Important notice
Individual copies of the present document can be downloaded from:
http://www.etsi.org
The present document may be made available in more than one electronic version or in print. In any case of existing or
perceived difference in contents between such versions, the reference version is the Portable Document Format (PDF).
In case of dispute, the reference shall be the printing on ETSI printers of the PDF version kept on a specific network drive
within ETSI Secretariat.
Users of the present document should be aware that the document may be subject to revision or change of status.
Information on the current status of this and other ETSI documents is available at
http://portal.etsi.org/tb/status/status.asp
If you find errors in the present document, please send your comment to one of the following services:
http://portal.etsi.org/chaircor/ETSI_support.asp
Copyright Notification
No part may be reproduced except as authorized by written permission.
The copyright and the foregoing restriction extend to reproduction in all media.
© European Telecommunications Standards Institute 2009.
All rights reserved.
TM TM TM TM
DECT , PLUGTESTS , UMTS , TIPHON , the TIPHON logo and the ETSI logo are Trade Marks of ETSI registered
for the benefit of its Members.
TM
3GPP is a Trade Mark of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members and of the 3GPP Organizational Partners.
LTE™ is a Trade Mark of ETSI currently being registered
for the benefit of its Members and of the 3GPP Organizational Partners.
GSM® and the GSM logo are Trade Marks registered and owned by the GSM Association.
ETSI
---------------------- Page: 2 ----------------------
3 Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
Contents
Intellectual Property Rights . 4
Foreword . 4
Introduction . 4
1 Scope . 6
2 References . 6
2.1 Normative references . 6
2.2 Informative references . 7
3 Definitions and abbreviations . 7
3.1 Definitions . 7
3.2 Abbreviations . 8
4 User requirements . 8
5 Method . 9
5.1 General . 9
5.2 Elicitation of command candidates. 9
5.3 Validation of command candidates . 10
5.4 Phonetic discriminability . 10
5.5 Final command definition . 10
6 List of commands . 11
6.1 Principles of use . 11
6.2 Basic commands . 12
6.3 Digits . 17
6.4 Communication commands . 20
6.5 Commands for the control of and navigation in media . 27
6.6 Commands for device and service settings . 33
Annex A (informative): Methodology for defining command vocabularies . 40
A.1 Elicitation: the spontaneous generation of potential command words . 40
A.1.1 Interviewers . 41
A.1.2 Test participants . 41
A.1.3 Set of functions . 41
A.1.4 Carefully Worded Descriptions (CWDs) . 41
A.1.5 Interviews . 42
A.1.6 Data Cleaning . 42
A.1.7 Frequency Analysis . 42
A.2 Validation . 42
A.3 Phonetic discriminability . 43
A.4 Final command definition . 44
Annex B (informative): Bibliography . 45
History . 46
ETSI
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4 Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
Intellectual Property Rights
IPRs essential or potentially essential to the present document may have been declared to ETSI. The information
pertaining to these essential IPRs, if any, is publicly available for ETSI members and non-members, and can be found
in ETSI SR 000 314: "Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); Essential, or potentially Essential, IPRs notified to ETSI in
respect of ETSI standards", which is available from the ETSI Secretariat. Latest updates are available on the ETSI Web
server (http://webapp.etsi.org/IPR/home.asp).
Pursuant to the ETSI IPR Policy, no investigation, including IPR searches, has been carried out by ETSI. No guarantee
can be given as to the existence of other IPRs not referenced in ETSI SR 000 314 (or the updates on the ETSI Web
server) which are, or may be, or may become, essential to the present document.
Foreword
This ETSI Standard (ES) has been produced by ETSI Technical Committee Human Factors (HF), and is now submitted
for the ETSI standards Membership Approval Procedure.
The work has been conducted in collaboration with industry. The present document is based upon user testing,
empirical data, phonetic discriminability analysis, expert knowledge, and an industry-consultation and consensus
process, aimed at a quick uptake and the widest possible support in product implementations to come.
Intended readers of the present document are:
• terminal manufacturers;
• service providers;
• network operators;
• manufacturers of multilingual speech recognizers;
• standards developers;
• software and user interface developers.
Introduction
Telecommunications, converging with information processing, and intersecting with mobility and the internet, are
leading to the development of new interactive applications and services, offering global access.
A technology enabling a natural user interaction with these (often complex) systems and services is speech recognition.
In recent years, speech recognition has become commercially viable in off-the-shelf ICT (Information and
Communication Technology) devices and services. Just as the graphical user interface changed the way we interact with
personal computers, so voice user interfaces are changing the way we interact with ICT devices and services.
Voice is fundamental to human communication and forms an important channel for universal access to ICT services.
Voice user interfaces are a terminal, display and potentially location-independent user interface technology, enabled by
speech recognition technologies. In order to simplify the user's learning and facilitate reuse of knowledge for the control
of different applications and devices, it is desirable to standardize voice commands for the most common and generic
functions. This standardization activity also meets one of the most important principles of the eEurope 2005 Action
Plan; that of design for all. This theme has been continued by the new EU initiative; the i2010 Action Plan. This will
help ensure that those with special needs such as elderly people, people with visual and other impairments, as well as
young children will benefit from a generic spoken command vocabulary. As the standard necessarily addresses speech
input it is recommended that the users of the present document provide some form of guidance for those end users who
may have a speech impediment.
ETSI
---------------------- Page: 4 ----------------------
5 Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
The present document is a timely contribution to enable the deployment of speech recognition in services and devices,
offering multi-lingual voice user interfaces. Thereby it will minimize learning effort, facilitate knowledge transfer and
develop user trust. Uniformity in the basic spoken commands improves the overall usability of the entire interactive
environment, which becomes increasingly important in a world of ubiquitous devices and services using speech
recognition.
The minimum generic set of spoken commands in the present document has been developed with a combined
methodology, including the collection of data from native speakers of the 30 languages covered by the present
document (see annex A for details). Therefore, it supports developers of ICT devices and services, leading to quicker,
more consistent, cheaper, and better user interface development.
The work is aligned with, and co-funded by, the European Commission's initiative eEurope, a programme for inclusive
deployment of new, important, consumer-oriented technologies, opening up global access to communications and other
new technologies, for all [2].
ETSI
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6 Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
1 Scope
The present document specifies a minimum set of spoken commands required to control the generic and common
functions of ICT devices and services that use speaker-independent speech recognition. It specifies the necessary and
most common vocabularies for voice commands to be supported by ICT devices and services.
The present document is applicable to the functions required for user interface navigation, call handling, the control of
and navigation in media, and management of device and service settings.
The present document specifies commands for the official languages (at the time of publication) of the European Union
(EU) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries, and for Russian. The standard addresses Bulgarian,
Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish,
Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Raeto-Romance, Romanian,
Russian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish [4]. Therefore, this updates the existing standard,
ES 202 076 [1], which covers only the five languages with the largest number of native speakers in the European
Union: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. The present document does not cover dialects with the exception
of Norwegian and Raeto Romance both of which have established dialects. All languages are addressed in "Received
Pronunciation".
The present document does not cover dialogue design issues, the full range of supplementary telecommunications
services, performance-related issues or speech output. Alphanumeric characters and symbols are not covered with the
exception of single digits and language-specific reference to two recurring digits (e.g. "Double Two").
2 References
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific.
• For a specific reference, subsequent revisions do not apply.
• Non-specific reference may be made only to a complete document or a part thereof and only in the following
cases:
- if it is accepted that it will be possible to use all future changes of the referenced document for the
purposes of the referring document;
- for informative references.
Referenced documents which are not found to be publicly available in the expected location might be found at
http://docbox.etsi.org/Reference.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
2.1 Normative references
The following referenced documents are indispensable for the application of the present document. For dated
references, only the edition cited applies. For non-specific references, the latest edition of the referenced document
(including any amendments) applies.
[1] ETSI ES 202 076 (V1.1.2): "Human Factors (HF) ; User Interfaces; Generic spoken command
vocabulary for ICT devices and services".
[2] i2010 - A European Information Society for growth and employment.
NOTE: Available at http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/index_en.htm.
[3] ITU-T Recommendation I.210 (1993): "principles of telecommunications services supported by an
ISDN and the means to describe them".
ETSI
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7 Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
[4] Languages of Europe - The Official EU languages.
NOTE: Available at http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/languages/index_en.html.
[5] ISO 9241-11 (1998): "Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals
(VDTs) - Part 11: guidance on usability".
2.2 Informative references
The following referenced documents are not essential to the use of the present document but they assist the user with
regard to a particular subject area. For non-specific references, the latest version of the referenced document (including
any amendments) applies.
[i.1] ETSI EG 201 013: "Human Factors (HF); Definitions, abbreviations and symbols".
[i.2] ETSI TR 102 068: "Human Factors (HF); Requirements for assistive technology devices in ICT".
[i.3] ETSI EG 202 048: "Human Factors (HF); Guidelines on the multimodality of icons, symbols and
pictograms".
3 Definitions and abbreviations
3.1 Definitions
For the purposes of the present document, the terms and definitions given in EG 201 013 [i.1] and the following apply:
basic command: employed frequently across a wide range of applications
design for all: design of products to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for
specialized adaptation
dialogue: series of exchanges between the user and a system
function: abstract concept of a particular use of or operation in a device or service
hot word: See keyword.
ICT devices and services: devices or services for processing information and/or supporting communication, which
have an interface to communicate with a user
impairment: reduction or loss of psychological, physiological or anatomical function or structure of a user
(environmental included)
keyword: word that the speech recognition system is looking for in word spotting mode
magic word: See keyword.
menu: list of choices from which a selection can be made
NOTE: A menu dialogue offers a user a series of lists of choices from which a series of selections can be made.
The result from any one selection may be another menu.
phonetic discriminability: ability to discriminate between words based on the analysis of their constituent phones
spoken command: verbal or other auditory dialogue format which enables the user to input commands to control a
device or service
supplementary service: additional service that modifies or supplements a basic telecommunication service
NOTE: Consequently, it cannot be offered to a customer as a stand-alone service; it has to be offered in
association with a basic telecommunication service. The same supplementary service may be common to
a number of basic telecommunication services. See ITU-T Recommendation I.210 [3].
ETSI
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8 Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
usability: effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular
environments (see ISO 9241-11 [5])
user: person who interacts with a product (see ISO 9241-11 [5])
user interface: elements of a product used to control it and receive information about its status, and the interaction that
enables the user to use it for its intended purpose
user requirements: requirements made by users, based on their needs and capabilities, in order to make use of a
product in the easiest, safest, most efficient and most secure way
word spotting mode: special state of the recognition system in which no speech is recognized or processed other than a
limited set of keywords
NOTE: A typical usage is in a dormant state of the speech recognizer, where issuing a "wake up" command (also
known as hot-word or keyword) can reactivate speech functionality.
3.2 Abbreviations
For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations apply:
ASR Automatic Speech Recognition
CWD Carefully Worded Description
EFTA European Free Trade Association
EU European Union
GPS Global Positioning System
ICT Information and Communication Technology
NLA Native Language Assistant
UCU University College Utrecht
4 User requirements
Intended users of the present document are those designing, developing, implementing and deploying ICT devices and
services with a speech user interface.
Intended end users mentioned in the present document are people who use ICT devices and services with a speech
interface, ranging from first time users to experienced power users.
Uniformity in the interactive elements increases the transfer of learning between different devices and services. Such
knowledge transfer becomes even more important in a world of ubiquitous devices and services using speech
recognition technology. In particular standardized commands improve the overall usability of the entire interactive
environment. Use of the generic vocabulary of spoken commands in the present document for the development of ICT
devices and services will enable end users to reapply knowledge and experience.
A generic spoken command vocabulary will particularly benefit some end users with temporary or permanent additional
needs, such as those with literacy difficulties, people with visual or cognitive impairments, those with an impaired
ability to perceive tactile stimuli, and people with limited dexterity.
For further guidance, including specifics of user impairments and resulting disabilities, assistive technologies, design
for all and multi-modal interfaces, see TR 102 068 [i.2] and EG 202 048 [i.3].
Ideally, a spoken command vocabulary should be intuitive, easy to learn, memorable, natural, and unambiguous. A
well-designed speech interface should:
• have a shallow learning curve;
• execute most common tasks;
• the ability to handle the vagaries of speech recognizers in a reliable and predictable way, maximizing the user
experience.
ETSI
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9 Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
Adequate feedback should be provided to users indicating, where applicable, that a command cannot be executed when
requested. Three examples are:
• When a function is not supported.
• When the function is currently not available.
• When the command is not understood.
5 Method
5.1 General
In order to meet the requirements stated in clause 4, where the standard is designed for a wide range of end users, an
empirical method has been employed for the elicitation and validation of potential voice commands. Native speakers of
the 30 languages were sampled for this data collection. The previous standard used an online method of data collection
where respondents were asked to complete a questionnaire. This worked well for the five most frequently spoken
languages of the EU. However, the extension of the standard covers countries where internet penetration is relatively
low and online questionnaires for these countries would not yield a representative sample of users for the purposes of
inclusion.
In addition to elicitation and validation, a procedure of phonetic discriminability has been applied to the candidate
commands to ensure minimal confusion with commands that are likely to be simultaneously available.
The employed method consists of three phases:
• Phase 1: Elicitation of command candidates;
• Phase 2: Validation of command candidates;
• Phase 3: Phonetic discriminability.
These phases are outlined here. More detailed descriptions of each phase can be found in annex A.
5.2 Elicitation of command candidates
In this phase, a sample of native speakers representing three age groups, aiming for an equal distribution of men and
women, were invited to take part in an interview on voice commands. At this stage, they were given some general
background to the aims of the study in order to inform them of the aims of the study prior to gaining their consent to
participating in the research. In most cases the interview was conducted by telephone but, in a small number of cases, an
interview was conducted with interviewer and interviewee sitting back to back in order to prevent artefacts based on the
interviewer's reactions. The interviewer, or Native Language Assistant (NLA), was also always a native or near-native
speaker who also carried out translations and transcriptions from documents in the original English and conducted
analyses. They read out, for each command, a phrase describing the function of the device or service, known as the
Carefully Worded Description (CWD), without mentioning any of the most likely resulting terms. The interviewees
were then asked to name the term or terms they would find most suitable as a command in the context of a spoken-
command supported device or service.
EXAMPLE: The carefully worded description used for describing the supplementary service "Call deflection"
was: "You hear the phone ring at a time when you do not want to speak to anyone. You want the
connection to be passed on to another name or number instead. What command would you give
before saying this name or number?".
From this process a number of different alternative command candidates were collected. The lists of terms were then
processed in order to reduce the number of morphological forms, e.g. infinitive or imperative, singular or plural, formal
or informal addressing. The data were also checked for typological errors and answers which did not reflect the function
implied by the carefully worded descriptions. The resulting terms were ordered according to the percentage of
participants who had named them, and the most frequently chosen terms were used as input to the validation phase.
ETSI
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10 Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
5.3 Validation of command candidates
In identifying the appropriate spoken commands it is not sufficient to conduct elicitation alone. It was also necessary to
rank the proposed terms in order to provide a degree of validation. Therefore, validation interviews were set up and
carried out in a similar way to elicitation interviews where the candidate commands were ranked in order of preference
by the participants (see clause A.2). The top-ranked commands were then put forward to the phonetic discriminability
phase.
The method described here was applied to the majority of the languages. However, it became clear that this method
was an unnecessary use of resources as the same result could be obtained by subjecting the results from discrimination
to expert analysis. Therefore, (see clause A.2), expert analysis was applied to those languages which had not undergone
validation, namely: Estonian, Greek, Icelandic, Latvian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Raeto-Romance, Swedish,
and Turkish to identify the spoken commands which were chosen for phase 3, phonetic discriminability. The experts
comprised a combination of: the NLAs, industry experts, linguistic and cultural representatives from the countries
involved, and Human Factors experts.
5.4 Phonetic discriminability
Whilst the previous two steps have provided a user-centric approach to the selection of command words, it is still
important to address technology issues.
EXAMPLE: A selection of words may be chosen as a result of the previous two phases that have a high level of
agreement across the user group.
However, if this selection gives rise to a high degree of confusability in the speech recognizer, between words which are
available for use in the same context, then the overall goal of usability is nullified. Therefore, discriminability analysis
was carried out to ensure that command words that are likely to be active simultaneously in a dialogue context can be
recognized correctly by the speech recognition system.
The approach consisted of the following steps:
a) Commands were clustered according to those which would be simultaneously available, e.g. all commands for
functions related to the handling of phone calls.
b) For each context, the top three commands from validation were assessed by native-language experts with
respect to their sounds and not to their orthographic forms. Commands were listed as potentially phonetically
confusable if:
- they share the same initial consonant or consonant cluster;
- they share similar stressed vowels;
- they rhyme;
- they are of equal length.
c) Commands that give rise to possible phonetic confusion were collated.
d) An alternative for one of the command words was chosen, with minimum repercussion with respect to the
ranking of candidates.
5.5 Final command definition
The final pass on the resulting command set was performed by submitting the results to a number of different groups for
verification. These were:
• Educated native speakers to ensure consistency within the entire language set in terms of morphological and
other characteristics.
• The NLAs, who were all native speakers of the languages they assisted with.
• Cultural and linguistic institutes of each of the languages represented in the standard.
ETSI
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11 Final draft ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-06)
• The industry reference group. This is a body of experts from industry, such as service
...
SLOVENSKI STANDARD
SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009
01-november-2009
ýORYHãNLGHMDYQLNL +) 8SRUDEQLãNLYPHVQLNL6SORãQLVORYDUJRYRUMHQLKXND]RY
]DQDSUDYHLQVWRULWYH,.7
Human Factors (HF) - User Interfaces - Generic spoken command vocabulary for ICT
devices and services
Ta slovenski standard je istoveten z: ES 202 076 Version 2.1.1
ICS:
33.040.01 Telekomunikacijski sistemi Telecommunication systems
na splošno in general
SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009 en
2003-01.Slovenski inštitut za standardizacijo. Razmnoževanje celote ali delov tega standarda ni dovoljeno.
---------------------- Page: 1 ----------------------
SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009
---------------------- Page: 2 ----------------------
SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009
ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
ETSI Standard
Human Factors (HF);
User Interfaces;
Generic spoken command vocabulary
for ICT devices and services
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SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009
2 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
Reference
RES/HF-00081
Keywords
ICT, interface, speech, telephony, voice, user
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ETSI
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SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009
3 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
Contents
Intellectual Property Rights . 4
Foreword . 4
Introduction . 4
1 Scope . 6
2 References . 6
2.1 Normative references . 6
2.2 Informative references . 7
3 Definitions and abbreviations . 7
3.1 Definitions . 7
3.2 Abbreviations . 8
4 User requirements . 8
5 Method . 9
5.1 General . 9
5.2 Elicitation of command candidates. 9
5.3 Validation of command candidates . 10
5.4 Phonetic discriminability . 10
5.5 Final command definition . 10
6 List of commands . 11
6.1 Principles of use . 11
6.2 Basic commands . 12
6.3 Digits . 17
6.4 Communication commands . 20
6.5 Commands for the control of and navigation in media . 27
6.6 Commands for device and service settings . 33
Annex A (informative): Methodology for defining command vocabularies . 40
A.1 Elicitation: the spontaneous generation of potential command words . 40
A.1.1 Interviewers . 41
A.1.2 Test participants . 41
A.1.3 Set of functions . 41
A.1.4 Carefully Worded Descriptions (CWDs) . 41
A.1.5 Interviews . 42
A.1.6 Data Cleaning . 42
A.1.7 Frequency Analysis . 42
A.2 Validation . 42
A.3 Phonetic discriminability . 43
A.4 Final command definition . 44
Annex B (informative): Bibliography . 45
History . 46
ETSI
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SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009
4 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
Intellectual Property Rights
IPRs essential or potentially essential to the present document may have been declared to ETSI. The information
pertaining to these essential IPRs, if any, is publicly available for ETSI members and non-members, and can be found
in ETSI SR 000 314: "Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); Essential, or potentially Essential, IPRs notified to ETSI in
respect of ETSI standards", which is available from the ETSI Secretariat. Latest updates are available on the ETSI Web
server (http://webapp.etsi.org/IPR/home.asp).
Pursuant to the ETSI IPR Policy, no investigation, including IPR searches, has been carried out by ETSI. No guarantee
can be given as to the existence of other IPRs not referenced in ETSI SR 000 314 (or the updates on the ETSI Web
server) which are, or may be, or may become, essential to the present document.
Foreword
This ETSI Standard (ES) has been produced by ETSI Technical Committee Human Factors (HF).
The work has been conducted in collaboration with industry. The present document is based upon user testing,
empirical data, phonetic discriminability analysis, expert knowledge, and an industry-consultation and consensus
process, aimed at a quick uptake and the widest possible support in product implementations to come.
Intended readers of the present document are:
• terminal manufacturers;
• service providers;
• network operators;
• manufacturers of multilingual speech recognizers;
• standards developers;
• software and user interface developers.
Introduction
Telecommunications, converging with information processing, and intersecting with mobility and the internet, are
leading to the development of new interactive applications and services, offering global access.
A technology enabling a natural user interaction with these (often complex) systems and services is speech recognition.
In recent years, speech recognition has become commercially viable in off-the-shelf ICT (Information and
Communication Technology) devices and services. Just as the graphical user interface changed the way we interact with
personal computers, so voice user interfaces are changing the way we interact with ICT devices and services.
Voice is fundamental to human communication and forms an important channel for universal access to ICT services.
Voice user interfaces are a terminal, display and potentially location-independent user interface technology, enabled by
speech recognition technologies. In order to simplify the user's learning and facilitate reuse of knowledge for the control
of different applications and devices, it is desirable to standardize voice commands for the most common and generic
functions. This standardization activity also meets one of the most important principles of the eEurope 2005 Action
Plan; that of design for all. This theme has been continued by the new EU initiative; the i2010 Action Plan. This will
help ensure that those with special needs such as elderly people, people with visual and other impairments, as well as
young children will benefit from a generic spoken command vocabulary. As the standard necessarily addresses speech
input it is recommended that the users of the present document provide some form of guidance for those end users who
may have a speech impediment.
ETSI
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SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009
5 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
The present document is a timely contribution to enable the deployment of speech recognition in services and devices,
offering multi-lingual voice user interfaces. Thereby it will minimize learning effort, facilitate knowledge transfer and
develop user trust. Uniformity in the basic spoken commands improves the overall usability of the entire interactive
environment, which becomes increasingly important in a world of ubiquitous devices and services using speech
recognition.
The minimum generic set of spoken commands in the present document has been developed with a combined
methodology, including the collection of data from native speakers of the 30 languages covered by the present
document (see annex A for details). Therefore, it supports developers of ICT devices and services, leading to quicker,
more consistent, cheaper, and better user interface development.
The work is aligned with, and co-funded by, the European Commission's initiative eEurope, a programme for inclusive
deployment of new, important, consumer-oriented technologies, opening up global access to communications and other
new technologies, for all [2].
ETSI
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SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009
6 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
1 Scope
The present document specifies a minimum set of spoken commands required to control the generic and common
functions of ICT devices and services that use speaker-independent speech recognition. It specifies the necessary and
most common vocabularies for voice commands to be supported by ICT devices and services.
The present document is applicable to the functions required for user interface navigation, call handling, the control of
and navigation in media, and management of device and service settings.
The present document specifies commands for the official languages (at the time of publication) of the European Union
(EU) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries, and for Russian. The standard addresses Bulgarian,
Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish,
Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Raeto-Romance, Romanian,
Russian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish [4]. Therefore, this updates the existing standard,
ES 202 076 [1], which covers only the five languages with the largest number of native speakers in the European
Union: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. The present document does not cover dialects with the exception
of Norwegian and Raeto Romance both of which have established dialects. All languages are addressed in "Received
Pronunciation".
The present document does not cover dialogue design issues, the full range of supplementary telecommunications
services, performance-related issues or speech output. Alphanumeric characters and symbols are not covered with the
exception of single digits and language-specific reference to two recurring digits (e.g. "Double Two").
2 References
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific.
• For a specific reference, subsequent revisions do not apply.
• Non-specific reference may be made only to a complete document or a part thereof and only in the following
cases:
- if it is accepted that it will be possible to use all future changes of the referenced document for the
purposes of the referring document;
- for informative references.
Referenced documents which are not found to be publicly available in the expected location might be found at
http://docbox.etsi.org/Reference.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
2.1 Normative references
The following referenced documents are indispensable for the application of the present document. For dated
references, only the edition cited applies. For non-specific references, the latest edition of the referenced document
(including any amendments) applies.
[1] ETSI ES 202 076 (V1.1.2): "Human Factors (HF) ; User Interfaces; Generic spoken command
vocabulary for ICT devices and services".
[2] i2010 - A European Information Society for growth and employment.
NOTE: Available at http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/index_en.htm.
[3] ITU-T Recommendation I.210 (1993): "principles of telecommunications services supported by an
ISDN and the means to describe them".
ETSI
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SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009
7 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
[4] Languages of Europe - The Official EU languages.
NOTE: Available at http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/languages/index_en.html.
[5] ISO 9241-11 (1998): "Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals
(VDTs) - Part 11: guidance on usability".
2.2 Informative references
The following referenced documents are not essential to the use of the present document but they assist the user with
regard to a particular subject area. For non-specific references, the latest version of the referenced document (including
any amendments) applies.
[i.1] ETSI EG 201 013: "Human Factors (HF); Definitions, abbreviations and symbols".
[i.2] ETSI TR 102 068: "Human Factors (HF); Requirements for assistive technology devices in ICT".
[i.3] ETSI EG 202 048: "Human Factors (HF); Guidelines on the multimodality of icons, symbols and
pictograms".
3 Definitions and abbreviations
3.1 Definitions
For the purposes of the present document, the terms and definitions given in EG 201 013 [i.1] and the following apply:
basic command: employed frequently across a wide range of applications
design for all: design of products to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for
specialized adaptation
dialogue: series of exchanges between the user and a system
function: abstract concept of a particular use of or operation in a device or service
hot word: See keyword.
ICT devices and services: devices or services for processing information and/or supporting communication, which
have an interface to communicate with a user
impairment: reduction or loss of psychological, physiological or anatomical function or structure of a user
(environmental included)
keyword: word that the speech recognition system is looking for in word spotting mode
magic word: See keyword.
menu: list of choices from which a selection can be made
NOTE: A menu dialogue offers a user a series of lists of choices from which a series of selections can be made.
The result from any one selection may be another menu.
phonetic discriminability: ability to discriminate between words based on the analysis of their constituent phones
spoken command: verbal or other auditory dialogue format which enables the user to input commands to control a
device or service
supplementary service: additional service that modifies or supplements a basic telecommunication service
NOTE: Consequently, it cannot be offered to a customer as a stand-alone service; it has to be offered in
association with a basic telecommunication service. The same supplementary service may be common to
a number of basic telecommunication services. See ITU-T Recommendation I.210 [3].
ETSI
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SIST ES 202 076 V2.1.1:2009
8 ETSI ES 202 076 V2.1.1 (2009-08)
usability: effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular
environments (see ISO 9241-11 [5])
user: person who interacts with a product (see ISO 9241-11 [5])
user interface: elements of a product used to control it and receive information about its status, and the interaction that
enables the user to use it for its intended purpose
user requirements: requirements made by users, based on their needs and capabilities, in order to make use of a
product in the easiest, safest, most efficient and most secure way
word spotting mode: special state of the recognition system in which no speech is recognized or processed other than a
limited set of keywords
NOTE: A typical usage is in a dormant state of the speech recognizer, where issuing a "wake up" command (also
known as hot-word or keyword) can reactivate speech functionality.
3.2 Abbreviations
For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations apply:
ASR Automatic Speech Recognition
CWD Carefully Worded Description
EFTA European Free Trade Association
EU European Union
GPS Global Positioning System
ICT Information and Communication Technology
NLA Native Language Assistant
UCU University College Utrecht
4 User requirements
Intended users of the present document are those designing, developing, implementing and deploying ICT devices and
services with a speech user interface.
Intended end users mentioned in the present document are people who use ICT devices and services with a speech
interface, ranging from first time users to experienced power users.
Uniformity in the interactive elements increases the transfer of learning between different devices and services. Such
knowledge transfer becomes even more important in a world of ubiquitous devices and services using speech
recognition technology. In particular standardized commands improve the overall usability of the entire interactive
environment. Use of the generic vocabulary of spoken commands in the present document for the development of ICT
devices and services will enable end users to reapply knowledge and experience.
A generic spoken command vocabulary will particularly benefit some end users with temporary or permanent additional
needs, such as those with literacy difficulties, people with visual or cognitive impairments, those with an impaired
ability to perceive tactile stimuli, and people with limited dexterity.
For further guidance, including specifics of user impairments and resulting disabilities, assistive technologies, design
for all and multi-modal interfaces, see TR 102 068 [i.2] and EG 202 048 [i.3].
Ideally, a spoken command vocabulary should be intuitive, easy to learn, memorable, natural, and unambiguous. A
well-designed speech interface should:
• have a shallow learning curve;
• execute most common tasks;
• the ability to handle the vagaries of speech recognizers in a reliable and predictable way, maximizing the user
experience.
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Adequate feedback should be provided to users indicating, where applicable, that a command cannot be executed when
requested. Three examples are:
• When a function is not supported.
• When the function is currently not available.
• When the command is not understood.
5 Method
5.1 General
In order to meet the requirements stated in clause 4, where the standard is designed for a wide range of end users, an
empirical method has been employed for the elicitation and validation of potential voice commands. Native speakers of
the 30 languages were sampled for this data collection. The previous standard used an online method of data collection
where respondents were asked to complete a questionnaire. This worked well for the five most frequently spoken
languages of the EU. However, the extension of the standard covers countries where internet penetration is relatively
low and online questionnaires for these countries would not yield a representative sample of users for the purposes of
inclusion.
In addition to elicitation and validation, a procedure of phonetic discriminability has been applied to the candidate
commands to ensure minimal confusion with commands that are likely to be simultaneously available.
The employed method consists of three phases:
• Phase 1: Elicitation of command candidates;
• Phase 2: Validation of command candidates;
• Phase 3: Phonetic discriminability.
These phases are outlined here. More detailed descriptions of each phase can be found in annex A.
5.2 Elicitation of command candidates
In this phase, a sample of native speakers representing three age groups, aiming for an equal distribution of men and
women, were invited to take part in an interview on voice commands. At this stage, they were given some general
background to the aims of the study in order to inform them of the aims of the study prior to gaining their consent to
participating in the research. In most cases the interview was conducted by telephone but, in a small number of cases, an
interview was conducted with interviewer and interviewee sitting back to back in order to prevent artefacts based on the
interviewer's reactions. The interviewer, or Native Language Assistant (NLA), was also always a native or near-native
speaker who also carried out translations and transcriptions from documents in the original English and conducted
analyses. They read out, for each command, a phrase describing the function of the device or service, known as the
Carefully Worded Description (CWD), without mentioning any of the most likely resulting terms. The interviewees
were then asked to name the term or terms they would find most suitable as a command in the context of a spoken-
command supported device or service.
EXAMPLE: The carefully worded description used for describing the supplementary service "Call deflection"
was: "You hear the phone ring at a time when you do not want to speak to anyone. You want the
connection to be passed on to another name or number instead. What command would you give
before saying this name or number?".
From this process a number of different alternative command candidates were collected. The lists of terms were then
processed in order to reduce the number of morphological forms, e.g. infinitive or imperative, singular or plural, formal
or informal addressing. The data were also checked for typological errors and answers which did not reflect the function
implied by the carefully worded descriptions. The resulting terms were ordered according to the percentage of
participants who had named them, and the most frequently chosen terms were used as input to the validation phase.
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5.3 Validation of command candidates
In identifying the appropriate spoken commands it is not sufficient to conduct elicitation alone. It was also necessary to
rank the proposed terms in order to provide a degree of validation. Therefore, validation interviews were set up and
carried out in a similar way to elicitation interviews where the candidate commands were ranked in order of preference
by the participants (see clause A.2). The top-ranked commands were then put forward to the phonetic discriminability
phase.
The method described here was applied to the majority of the languages. However, it became clear that this method
was an unnecessary use of resources as the same result could be obtained by subjecting the results from discrimination
to expert analysis. Therefore, (see clause A.2), expert analysis was applied to those languages which had not undergone
validation, namely: Estonian, Greek, Icelandic, Latvian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Raeto-Romance, Swedish,
and Turkish to identify the spoken commands which were chosen for phase 3, phonetic discriminability. The experts
comprised a combination of: the NLAs, industry experts, linguistic and cultural representatives from the countries
involved, and Human Factors experts.
5.4 Phonetic discriminability
Whilst the previous two steps have provided a user-centric approach to the selection of command words, it is still
important to address technology issues.
EXAMPLE: A selection of words may be chosen as a result of the previous two phases that have a high level of
agreement across the user group.
However, if this selection gives rise to a high degree of confusability in the speech recognizer, between words which are
available for use in the same context, then the overall goal of usability is nullified. Therefore, discriminability analysis
was carried out to ensure that command words that are likely to be active simultaneously in a dialogue context can be
recognized correctly by the speech recognition system.
The approach consisted of the following steps:
a) Commands were clustered according to those which would be simultaneously available, e.g. all commands for
functions related to the handling of phone calls.
b) For each context, the top three commands from validation were assessed by native-language experts with
respect to their sounds and not to their orthographic forms. Commands were listed as potentially phonetically
confusable if:
- they share the same initial consonant or consonant cluster;
- they share similar stressed vowels;
- they rhyme;
- they are of equal length.
c) Commands that give rise to possible
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