Special Issue on “Vocal Interaction: Beyond Traditional Automatic Speech Recognition” of Universal Access in the Information Society journal http://www.springeronline.com/journal/10209/about.

Speech-based interaction research has primarily been focused on the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems that attempt to recognize the words uttered by the user which are then used to drive the system. This special issue seeks to explore human voice-based interaction that goes beyond word recognition by exploiting information contained within the non-verbal aspect of vocalizations (e.g., tone, pitch, volume, timbre). This special issue also seeks to investigate the range of application domains that can benefit from voice-based interaction and the challenges and issues that arise in integrating it into usable and acceptable systems. Voice-based interaction appears as a promising approach for facilitating access:

• to diverse users, including the very young and the elderly, as well as people with various types of disabilities (e.g., motor impairment, speech impairment)
• in diverse contexts of use, especially those emerging due to the diffusion of novel computer applications into everyday life, such as “mobile computing”, “ubiquitous computing”, “disappearing computer”, “ambient intelligence”, etc.

Original research contributions are solicited, which focus on the use of voice-based interaction with a view to improving computer accessibility for all users in all contexts of use.

The thematic scope of this special issue includes scientific issues relating to the theories, models, implementation, evaluation, utility and usability of novel voice-based systems, provided that they contribute to improving universal access.

This special issue focuses on research work on the design, development, evaluation, and use of voice-based interaction. Authors of submissions should carefully explain how the work and results presented contribute to facilitating and promoting universal access.

Contributions are solicited in, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Design, implementation and evaluation of novel voice-based interaction systems.
• Usability of voice-based interaction (e.g., ease of use, ease of learning, fatigue, satisfaction, acceptability, adoption).
• Design theory/model/paradigm, software architectures, and support tools for voice-based interaction
• Methods, techniques and instruments to assess the utility, accessibility and usability of novel voice-based interaction
• User and task-modeling in the contexts of usage and learning of voice-based interaction
• Voice-based interaction and users with special needs

• Intention to submit (a tentative abstract of 100 words): June 29, 2007
• Submission of papers: July 27, 2007
• Notification of acceptance: Aug 31, 2007 Sep 30, 2007.
• Submission of camera-ready version of accepted papers: Oct 31, 2007.
• Expected publication date of the special issue: early 2008.

• Sri Kurniawan, The University of Manchester, UK
• Susumu Harada, The University of Washington, USA
• Adam J Sporka, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic

Please refer to the “Instructions to authors” section on the Website of the UAIS Journal. There is a page limit of 8000 words for long papers and 4000 words for short papers (excluding the 100-words abstract and references).

Authors should submit their manuscripts electronically as PDF files to organizers[at]vocal-input[dot]org. Please note that blind submission is not required.

Submission of an article implies that:

• the work described has not been published before, except in form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis;
• it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

For further information, please, refer to the “Copyright information” section on the Website of the UAIS Journal.