Mobile Visual Access to Legacy Voice-based Applications

Vocal systems are a well-established reality. Examples of popular voice-based applications include helpdesk services, reservation systems, and vocal mailboxes. These services, that are accessible by mobile or fixed phones, suffer from some drawbacks: they cannot be used by people with hearing impairments, and they are not user-friendly for recurring customers who are forced into a bothersome interaction model. Thanks to the current availability of mobile devices with high processing capability and large memory, it is now possible to augment vocal systems with a graphical presentation. We designed an interpreter that converts the interaction between the user and the applications from vocal to visual, improving the usability of services as well as their accessibility. This has been achieved without requiring any substantial modification to the original voice-based systems. In this way, the service providers are not forced to re-write the applications or even abandon the technology in which they had invested.