Gartner says that over 30% of our computer interactions these days are through voice rather than touch, mouse, or keyboard. (“Hey Alexa, can you verify that for me?”) They go on to explain that “conversational user interface technology is fundamentally shifting how technology providers build and how people use software and applications. Product managers developing software solutions must add conversational UI into their product roadmaps in the next two years for relevant use cases.”

Join Scott Davis, a web architect and principal engineer at ThoughtWorks, to explore W3C specifications like the Web Speech API (for speech synthesis and speech recognition), Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), and WebVTT (for closed captioning). These technologies not only power smart speakers from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple; they power smartphones and desktop browsers as well.

With the recent passage of the European Accessibility Act (EAA), all new and existing websites in the EU must meet W3C standards for accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA-level) by September 2020. So while you’re setting yourself up for future success with your conversational UI architecture, you’re also helping your company avoid lawsuits (over 10,000 Americans with Disabilities Act cases in 2019 alone), improving your SEO, and tapping into an underserved market (one in five people, over 1.5 billion people worldwide) with an estimated market value of over $7 trillion dollars in discretionary spending.