Meeting minutes
RAUR updates, if any.
janina: Item 14 - call participants and status - preserving data after the call
<joconnor> JOC: Is that a preservation of meta data thing?
janina: Knowing who was in the call
Judy: need to be cautious about capturing meeting chats unless participants know this in advance
<joconnor> JOC: So how is that an a11y thing?
janina: knowing the name of the speaker is very useful
Judy: also a common request from deaf participants
Smart agent/natural language dialogue system accessibility.
<joconnor> https://
Judy: Voice agent seems a bit restrictive
joconnor: The wiki sets up various definitions, and then drills down more to voice agents to limit scope
jasonjgw: If it doesn't have text input and output that can be an accessibility issue
<joconnor> JW: we need to look at Natural language processing and dialogue systems
jasonjgw: Some work in natural language has improved voice/text translation
judy: Concerned that the topic has "voice agent" in the header - it's disability restrictive
Judy: Smart agent or digital assistant would be more inclusive
janina: Consider web interface modality as a starting place - different paradigms - some have screen some do not - but here we have primarily a conversational approach
joconnor: Primarily these tools focus on voice
joconnor: Problem with the "big" umbrella is that is too large
JPaton: Makes sense to look at the whole digital assistant universe at some point, but makes sense to drill into more defined interfaces like voice assistants
janina: Maybe "conversational assistant?"
janina: If we can limit to certain knowledge domains we would get more meaningful results
Judy: use cases to consider such as someone who is deaf, quiet speech, etc.
Judy: the voice agent area may be very intriguing from a research perspective, but framing the discussion at a more cross-disability level at the start would be more helpful
jasonjgw: The term "conversational agent" may be more inclusive -- allows for text input/output and so forth
joconnor: We need a good definition to move forward
jasonjgw: Natural language includes a much larger focus - not dependent upon speech
janina: This is why we had VoiceXML spec, but it never seemed to be implemented
<Zakim> Judy, you wanted to comment on helping with the definition
<Judy> [JB: NLP is a decades-old subfield of linguistics, and we can take advantage of these kinds of established definitions to help us frame our note]
JPaton: Some systems include speech and text - not just speech
jasonjgw: Could write something to start?
joconnor: We need help on the definitions from others
Judy: Agree that we need definitions, but doubt it can be done very quickly - make take more time to develop solid underpinnings
jasonjgw: Can begin with writing the definition and then we can flesh out
jasonjgw: Action for next meeting to work on the definition assigned to Jason