At SpeechTek a common question was how speech could be embedded on devices. Speech Server is a server based speech recognition, application control, prompting and speech synthesis platform. You can access this powerful platform two ways: 1) telephone only – you call into the Server which creates a voice browser the you interact with and 2) you access the speech application through Internet Explorer on your desktop or your PocketPC/Smartphone. In both cases the speech server does the heavy lifting of speech recognition/speech synthesis/prompt playing and you have to have some connection to the server: either through the telephone only or through Internet access. What this does not provide a stand-alone application on a device that can operate independent of an Internet connection or phone call.

The Speech API or SAPI is the COM-based API method you would use to have stand-alone speech capabilities integrated into your application. The SDK for SAPI is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/speech/download/sdk51. From there you’ll find text to speech engines and speech recognition that you can work with.

Finally, WinFX inlcudes new managed Speech API; using this you can incorporate both speech recognition and speech synthesis. To get this you’ll need to the WinFX SDK for Avalon & Indigo Beta 1 RC 1. Here are some instructions on how to get to this information. http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

In the mean time here are some interesting articles to help with SAPI.

Cheers!
Chris