International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395 -0056 Volume: 04 Issue: 01 | Jan -2017 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072 © 2017, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 5.181 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 17 Accessing Information about Programs and Services through a Voice Site by Underprivileged Students in Education Sector of Sri Lanka Daminda Herath Esoft Metro Campus, Colombo, Sri Lanka ---------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract - The World Wide Web (WWW) has made the Internet accessible to anyone regardless of their computer background. A large number of people in the world are using Internet facilities for various purposes. Especially in the education sector most of the universities and other institutions around the world using Internet for networking, teaching and learning purposes. Therefor students should have the facilities to access the information through the Internet easily and quickly. However there is a huge number of students, especially in the developing region like Sri Lanka who are still unreached by this sophisticated facility. Because of lack of resources. But mobile phones and wireless phones have made a considerably high percentage into the population of Sri Lanka. Low of cost, the simple user interfaces, limited menus, Infrastructural growth are the main factors to the high usage of mobile and wireless phone. The main objective of this research to implement a voice site which is a voice-driven site parallel to the existing web site in education institutes. This concept is known as The World Wide Telecom Web (WWTW). A voice-driven site which addresses the underprivileged students to access the information through voice based communication parallel to the web site and provide a facility to generate own voice site. Voice site enables the telephone (Mobile, Wireless and fixed phones) students to access through a simple voice based interface from telephony devices and do voice browsing further. This helps for education institutions to reduce the operational cost. Key Words: World Wide Telecom Web (WWTW), Voice XML (VXML), Voice Site, Voice Browser, Voice Recognition 1. INTRODUCTION The Internet is the one of the sophisticated technology and fashion that have made differences in world order in recent past. The World Wide Web is one of the service accessible via the Internet along with various other including email, file sharing, online gaming, streaming media, voice telephony, remote access etc. Therefor the Internet and WWW are very popular in modern society and the most of the sectors in the society like educational, industrial, business, government are exposed to the Internet and World Wide Web. 1.1 Overview of the Problem Situation in Sri Lanka, The Internet penetration is 29.3% according to the Internet World stats [6]. When it compares to other developing countries. It is a low percentage of the Internet usage. See Table 1. Table-1: Internet usage and Population Statistics in Sri Lanka Year User Population %penetration 2016 6,087,164 20,810,816 29.3 % 2015 5,839,905 20,715,010 28.2% There are various reasons to the low rate of the Internet penetration in Sri Lanka. The most common access mechanism to the Internet has been through the Personal Computers (PCs) or high end web-enabled handled devices. A PC cost is still high about LKR 20,000(USD134) - 30,000(USD202). This is very costly for people in Sri Lanka who are spending money for educational purposes as well as connectivity cost is also very high in Sri Lanka. Common methods of access Internet include dial-up, broadband, Wi-Fi, Satellite. Dial-up connection is comparatively cheaper than others but it has slow moving traffic (52kbps). In additional to cost factor, there are infrastructural issues such as non-availability of electricity and non- availability of Internet connection facility. In rural areas in Sri Lanka still not having the facilities of electricity and telecommunications. A huge amount of money is needed to invest to develop infrastructural facilities but developing country like Sri Lanka, It is impossible to do quickly. In addition, using a PC requires IT skills beyond language reading and writing, leading to a low acceptance rate.