Patent ID: 7447299

Claim:
A method in a voice response system of receiving input of a keyword, the method comprising: providing a list of keywords of characters; providing a list of words, each word having an output utterance that is an audio representation of the word, each word being associated with a keyword in the provided list of keywords, and each word having a different spelling from its associated keyword; receiving from a user a key sequence with a key of the key sequence representing multiple characters; identifying from the received key sequence without other input from the user those keywords of the list of keywords whose initial characters match the possible characters of the received key sequence; after identifying the keywords of the list that match, outputting an output utterance corresponding to the words associated with each identified keywords; and prompting the user to select an identified keyword by speaking the output utterance corresponding to the word associated with the keyword to be selected; and after outputting the output utterances, inputting from the user an input utterance corresponding to one of the output utterances; and recognizing the input utterance using a constrained recognition grammar that is constrained by the output utterances corresponding to the words associated with the identified keywords such that the input utterance can only be recognized as a word associated with one of the identified keywords.