User Interfaces for Anyone Anywhere

In a global context of multimodal man-machine interaction, we approach a wide spectrum of fields, such as software engineering, intelligent communication and speech dialogues. This paper presents technological aspects of the shifting from the traditional desktop interfaces to more expressive, natural, flexible and portable ones, where more persons, in a greater number of situations, will be able to interact with computers. Speech appears to be one of the best forms of interaction, especially in order to support non-skilled users. Modalities such as speech, among others, tend to be very relevant to accessing information in our future society, in which mobile devices will play a reponderant role. Therefore, we are placing an emphasis on verbal communication in open environments (Java/XML) using software agent technology.