Web Speech API support ?

[florianSB]

Currently Edge (81.0.381.0) is behaving strange when using the Web Speech API for speech recognition. The interface exists, but does not work AND does not throw any error.

Here is a quick code example:

var rec = new window.webkitSpeechRecognition(); 
rec.onresult = console.log; 
rec.onerror = console.error;
rec.start();

Are there any plans to either:

a) Fully implement the speech recognition part or ...

b) ... throw proper errors?

Since Microsoft is already using speech recognition in Windows, has the technology for offline and online ASR and has the cloud architecture it should be no big deal to fully support it right? 

It would be really great to finally get a 2nd browser that actually has a working implementation of the API (Google is doing it for 6 years now since Chrome 33).

[#2]

@florianSB Thanks for reaching out and letting us know. I'll pass this along to our Accessibility Team (unless you've noticed a change since originally posting this) and will let you know if/when they have any additional thoughts.

Fawkes (they/them)
Project & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge

[#3 · Accepted solution]

@florianSB thanks for reporting this issue. We are aware of this and are working to wire up Speech recognition in the upcoming future versions of Edge for our customers. Once this feature is out in Canary, I will let you know so you can try it out.

[#4]

Great, thank you. Looking forward to it! 🙂

[#5]

This is still not working on Edge Canary 84.0.488.0

The Speech Recognition starts (onspeechstart event) but no response is received (onresult event).

[#6]

@GurpreetV Please let me know as well.  Perhaps you could also update this thread.

[#7]

@Deleted It's not just an accessibility issue. Duolingo requires the Web Speech API to make the mic usable on their website. It's the only reason I still use Chrome. I'd drop it in a heartbeat if Microsoft made Edge work with that site.

[#8]

@GurpreetV yes please let me know about progress with this.

[#9]

@GurpreetV Any news about this functionality, as the guy above, i'm still using Chrome only for this 😞 

[#10]

@__Isaac After checking-in with the team, I'm happy to confirm that this is still in the works! It sounds like there were some unexpected technical roadblocks, but they are still moving forward.

Fawkes (they/them)
Program Manager & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge

[#11]

@Deleted Awesome! I can't wait to ditch Chrome for Edge when using Duolingo!

[#12]

@Deleted 

Good to hear 🙂

It would still be good to throw at least a proper error message until the actual speech recognition is connected. I don't want to return to the old days where I need to check the navigator user-agent before I can use the API properly 😕

Currently Edge still pretends to do something instead of failing gracefully.

[#13]

@florianSB I wanted to let you know that the devs liked your suggestion so much that they've written that error message into code. Thanks for your feedback! 🙂

Fawkes (they/them)
Program Manager & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge

[#14]

Great! 😄
Does that mean we can expect it in the next dev version? ^^

[#15]

@florianSB I don't want to make any promises about exactly when it'll go live, but if you can expect to see it soon (if you haven't already.) 🙂

Fawkes (they/them)
Program Manager & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge

[#16]

@Deleted it looks like the latest dev channel version is throwing some error now, not quite the error I'd expect but good enough .

Also I'm excited to see that the "voice search" topic has made it to the top feedback list with the status "planned for September" which will probably fully implement the feature soon and fix all problems with the Web Speech API  

[#17]

Is there any support now? It's already October

[#18]

@HenryLin 

My latest Edge version 87.0.654.0 is giving an error message now (which is good) but this message says "language not supported" even for "en-US" locale (which is bad).

Let's see what the next official patch-notes say. Maybe the "fix" for September was not about implementing a working version but just to properly tell a website that its not supported yet 😕

[#19]

@florianSB 

i open this web on edge dev , it's still not work ...

https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html

[#20]

@HenryLin 

I quickly checked the source code of the page and they only catch microphone and permission errors but ignore everything else 😕

I've finished work on an update for my voice assistant app to handle the errors properly but the version is not released yet. I'll post a link for testing as soon as it is available 🙂