TELEPHONY-DATA APPLICATION INTERFACE APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR MULTII-MODAL ACCESS TO DATA APPLICATIONS

A voice-enabled system for online shopping provides a voice and telephony interface, as well a text and graphic interface, for shopping over the Internet using a browser or a telephone. The system allows customers to access an online shop, search for desired database items, select items, and finally pay for selected items using a credit card, over a phone line or the Internet. A telephony-Internet interface converts spoken queries into electronic commands for transmission to an online shop or database. Markup language-type pages transmitted to callers from the online-shop or database are parsed to extract selected information. The selected information is then reported to the callers via audio messaging.