Overview of Multimodal Portlet Tooling

The Multimodal Toolkit adds extensions to Rational Application Developer to provide multimodal functionality, allowing the development of applications with both visual and voice user interfaces. The Toolkit provides an integrated development environment that can minimize both the skills and time needed to develop applications for XHTML+Voice aware PDAs and other handheld wireless devices.

XHTML+Voice (X+V) is a Web markup language for developing multimodal applications for wireless devices. X+V uses both voice and visual elements of user interaction. As devices become smaller, modes of interaction other than keyboard and stylus have become a necessity. In particular, devices like cell phones and PDAs serve many functions, and contain sufficient processing power to handle a variety of tasks.

Multimodal access is the ability to combine more than one mode of interaction, including speech recognition, keyboard, touch screen, and stylus. Depending on the situation and the device, a combination of input modes will make using a small device easier. For example, in a Web browser on a PDA, you can select items by tapping or by providing spoken input. Similarly, you can use voice or stylus to enter information into a field. With multimodal technology, information on the device can be both displayed and spoken.

To download Multimodal Toolkit, go to the Multimodal Toolkit download site.