1244237 - enable Web Speech API for desktop

Status: NEW

(Core :: Web Speech, enhancement)

Description

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

Basic implementation is complete, and enabled in Firefox OS. Enabling in desktop is just a build flag. API is already shipping in Chrome and Opera.

Let's enable this on desktop.

If for some reason we're not ready to enable in release channels, let's at least make it available to developers somehow (Nightly, Dev Edition, about:config, etc).

Comment 1

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

Andrew, how do we get started with this process?

Comment 2

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

Hm, looks like maybe already in about:config via media.webspeech.recognition.enable.

What's blocking turning that on by default?

Comment 3

[Makoto Kato [:m_kato]]

Is this issue for Web Speech recognition API?  Web Speech API has 2 parts (synthesis and recognition).

Comment 4

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

This is for both parts.

Comment 5

[Andrew Overholt [:overholt]]

(In reply to Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich) from comment #1)
> Andrew, how do we get started with this process?

Sending an intent to ship email is a decent way to kickstart the conversation: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI/ExposureGuidelines#Email_templates

Comment 6

[Jefferson]

MDN article: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/Web_Speech_API/Using_the_Web_Speech_API

For speech recognition MDN says:

"Firefox desktop and mobile support it in Gecko 44+, without prefixes, and it can be turned on by flipping the media.webspeech.recognition.enable flag to true in about:config. The permissions settings/UI haven't yet been sorted out however, so permission can't be granted to use it by the user, so it can't be used. This will be fixed soon."

I don't know what bug it is which will be fixing it soon. ?

For speech synthesis MDN says:

"Firefox desktop and mobile support it in Gecko 42+ (Windows)/44+, without prefixes, and it can be turned on by flipping the media.webspeech.synth.enabled flag to true in about:config."

That sounds ready to go.

Comment 7

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

(In reply to Jefferson from comment #6)
> MDN article:
> https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/Web_Speech_API/
> Using_the_Web_Speech_API
> 
> For speech recognition MDN says:
> 
> "Firefox desktop and mobile support it in Gecko 44+, without prefixes, and
> it can be turned on by flipping the media.webspeech.recognition.enable flag
> to true in about:config. The permissions settings/UI haven't yet been sorted
> out however, so permission can't be granted to use it by the user, so it
> can't be used. This will be fixed soon."
> 
> I don't know what bug it is which will be fixing it soon. ?

I also couldn't fine one. Though it looks like the missing thing is that the SpeechRecognition API is not exposed to website content yet. So, I've created bug 1248897.

Sebastian

Comment 8

[Abhishek]

I think the issue is that the recognition part (speech to text) hasn't been implemented yet. If you look into the speechRecognition.cpp file, you can just return true everywhere it checks for a permission and websites will get access to the api. However things still don't work because of the lack of recognition part (at least that's what I feel looking at the source). It would be great if anybody can point towards the team working on this, would love to help.

Comment 9

[André Natal]

One needs to build Firefox with the flags turned on to include the only current implementation available (pocketsphinx + english). If you guys are willing to move forward with it, I can help you to set and have it running.

Comment 10

[Abhishek]

(In reply to André Natal from comment #9)
> One needs to build Firefox with the flags turned on to include the only
> current implementation available (pocketsphinx + english). If you guys are
> willing to move forward with it, I can help you to set and have it running.

Interested.

Comment 11

[Robert Kaiser]

Just as a point for voice in the browser (not necessarily the API itself), I would love to be able to dictate long-form texts like blog posts to the browser (and then probably proof-read and improve them).

Comment 12

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

Release Note Request (optional, but appreciated)
[Why is this notable]: Cool new feature
[Affects Firefox for Android]: No
[Suggested wording]: Web Speech API enabled (nightly only)
[Links (documentation, blog post, etc)]: dunno?

Comment 13

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Removing this request to get it off the relnote radar for now. Please re-nominate if/when the status changes.

Comment 14

[darksharcoux]

In our company, we successfully integrated vosk open source project for offline speech recognition on desktop. It is probably possible to implement it on Firefox too. It gives pretty accurate results, as long as the language model is being downloaded for the user language.

Would it be better than the current solution?

Comment 15

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

This is also affecting Axis Bank's site, which seems to presume the webkitSpeechRecognition API is always available (as found in https://webcompat.com/issues/117770) and fails to show a credit card details page otherwise.