Making Voices Heard - The Present and Future of Voice Interfaces in India

We will present our findings from a study of the landscape of voice interfaces in India, and seek feedback towards finalisation of the same.The study, supported by Mozilla Corporation, examines the adaptation and innovation with voice interfaces in Indian languages,and discusses possible policy and design interventions through the lenses of privacy of users,inclusion of non-English languages,and accessibility of interfaces.We will present a visual mapping of actors in the Indian voice interface landscape, and three case studies focusing on key technology developers:Common Voice (community driven open source), Indic TTS (public funded), and Niki (commercial).The session will have four segments - a general introduction to the study and key design and policy concerns, presentation of observations from the case studies, an open discussion about the study,and a final segment to seek the participants views on the futures of voice interfaces in non-English languages.