Active areas of research and development include:

• Speech Understanding Interfaces:
  This focus deals with integrating continuous speech recognition and natural language understanding techniques.

• Dialog Management:
  This focus deals with the study and application of techniques for managing dialog states in natural language processing systems.

• Assistive Technologies:
  This focus deals with the development, evaluation, and dissemination of interfaces for users with disabilities. 
  
  See SUITEKeys--a continuous speech user interface for motor-impaired users.

• Web-Accessible User Interfaces:
  This focus deals with the study and application of techniques for developing user interfaces accessible via the Web.
  
  See FLAIRS-2000, ITiCSE'99, and AI Education Repository.

• Multimodal Interaction:
  This focus deals with research on techniques for combining various input and output modalities to improve effectiveness of user interfaces.