The spoken web: audio-internet for rural populations

Successful examples of communication methods which have been used to mainstream research findings in Africa and Asia have been compiled into an online resource booklet by the Research into Use Programme.

Here's one of the stories from the booklet, about voice-based internet in Gujarat, western India:

THE SPOKEN WEB: Audio-internet for rural populations

An exciting development in India is an entirely new kind of web, based on the spoken word. Unlike the internet, the spoken web is built around VoiceSites rather than text websites, and is accessed by mobile phone rather than computer.
People who call up VoiceSites on their mobile phones need only to speak and listen. They don't have to read or write. They can create their own VoiceSites or access those of other people. They can also surf the spoken web and jump from VoiceSite to VoiceSite using spoken commands. A caller's experience of an individual VoiceSite is rather like the interactive voice response systems that customers come across when calling a bank.
It's easy for a person to set up a VoiceSite. They dial a number, and software called VoiGen then guides them, in the local language, through the process. When prompted, they record their information, such as a welcome greeting and contact details, and VoiGen creates a VoiceSite. The person is then assigned a VoiceSite phone number, equivalent to a URL.
Anyone who calls the person's VoiceSite number is greeted with the welcome message, and then given help to navigate around the VoiceSite. For example, callers could say "address" and the VoiceSite would tell them the address.
VoiceSites can be linked, just like websites on the internet.
This means, for example that farmers could use a VoiceSite to sell their produce.

Comment
"An audio format would provide much more access and opportunity for local people to contribute," says Tapan Parikh of the University of California, Berkeley. "While a farmer may not be able to write a memo, or an email, or a summary of his work, he can easily talk about it."
Although people often use cellphones, they rarely use text messaging or even the address book. Guruduth Banavar, director of IBM India Research Laboratory, says "They would rather call a friend to find another person's phone number than actually save the number in their address book."
The local radio station archives its content on a VoiceSite, which villagers can access and leave comments on. Others can listen to these comments, and future broadcasts incorporate them into their discussion. "We are using the spoken web tool to make community radio more interactive," says Parikh.

Research Into Use collected the story from 2008 New Scientist 2679, pages 22-23.

RIU's publication, titled: Communications success stories: mainstreaming research findings to lessen poverty, has 40 pages and can be downloaded here for free.