speech-recognition-aws-polyfill

A polyfill for the experimental browser Speech Recognition API which falls back to AWS Transcribe.

Features

• Works without a server (browser-only)
• Supports the following browsers/versions (~94% coverage)

Note: this is not a polyfill for MediaDevices.getUserMedia() - check the support table in the link above.

Who is it for?

This Library is a good fit if you are already using AWS services (or you would just prefer to use AWS).

A polyfill also exists at: /antelow/speech-polyfill, which uses Azure Cognitive Services as a fallback. However, it seems to have gone stale with no updates for ~2 years.

Prerequisites

• An AWS account
• A Cognito identity pool (unauthenticated or authenticated) with the TranscribeStreaming permission.

AWS Setup Guide

1. In the AWS console, visit the Cognito section and click Manage Identity Pools.
2. Click Create new identity pool and give it a name.
3. To allow anyone who visits your app to use speech recognition (e.g. for public-facing web apps) check Enable access to unauthenticated identities
4. If you want to configure authentication instead, do so now.
5. Click Create Pool
6. Choose or create a role for your users. If you are just using authenticated sessions, you are only interested in the second section. If you aren't sure what to do here, the default role is fine.
7. Make sure your role has the TranscribeStreaming policy attached. To attach this to your role search for IAM -> Roles, find your role, click "Attach policies" and search for the TranscribeStreaming role.
8. Go back to Cognito and find your identity pool. Click Edit identity pool in the top right and make a note of your Identity pool ID

Usage

Install with npm i --save speech-recognition-aws-polyfill

Import into your application:

import SpeechRecognitionPolyfill from 'speech-recognition-aws-polyfill'

Or use from the unpkg CDN:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/speech-recognition-aws-polyfill"></script>

Create a new instance of the polyfill:

const recognition = new SpeechRecognitionPolyfill({
  IdentityPoolId: 'eu-west-1:11111111-1111-1111-1111-1111111111', // your Identity Pool ID
  region: 'eu-west-1' // your AWS region
})

Alternatively, use the create method.

const SpeechRecognition = SpeechRecognititionPolyfill.create({
  IdentityPoolId: 'eu-west-1:11111111-1111-1111-1111-1111111111', // your Identity Pool ID
  region: "eu-west-1"
});

const recognition = new SpeechRecognition()

You can then interact with recognition the same as you would with an instance of window.SpeechRecognition

The recognizer will stop capturing if it doesn't detect speech for a period. You can also stop manually with the stop() method.

Support Table

Properties

Property	Supported
lang	Yes
grammars	No
continuous	Yes
interimResults	No
maxAlternatives	No
serviceURI	No

Methods

Method	Supported
abort	Yes
start	Yes
stop	Yes

Events

Events	Supported
audiostart	Yes
audioend	Yes
start	Yes
end	Yes
error	Yes
nomatch	Yes
result	Yes
soundstart	Partial
soundend	Partial
speechstart	Partial
speechend	Partial

Full Example

import SpeechRecognitionPolyfill from 'speech-recognition-aws-polyfill'

const recognition = new SpeechRecognitionPolyfill({
  IdentityPoolId: 'eu-west-1:11111111-1111-1111-1111-1111111111', // your Identity Pool ID
  region: 'eu-west-1' // your AWS region
})
recognition.lang = 'en-US'; // add this to the config above instead if you want

document.body.onclick = function() {
  recognition.start();
  console.log('Listening');
}

recognition.onresult = function(event) {
  const { transcript } = event.results[0][0]
  console.log('Heard: ', transcript)
}

recognition.onerror = console.error

Roadmap

• Further increase parity between the two implementations by better supporting additional options and events.
• Build a companion polyfill for speech synthesis (TTS) using AWS Polly
• Provide a way to output the transcription as an RxJS observable

Contributing and Bugs

Questions, comments and contributions are very welcome. Just raise an Issue/PR (or, check out the fancy new Github Discussions feature)

License

MIT