Depiction of a speech user interface via graphical elements is provided. One or more bits of a graphical user interface bitmask are re-designated as speech bits. When a software application processes the re-designated speech bits, a window manager responsible for generating and rendering a graphical user interface for the application passes information to a secondary window manager responsible for generating and rendering a speech user interface. The secondary speech window manager may load a text-to-speech engine, a speech recognizer engine, a lexicon or library of recognizable words or phrases and a set of “grammars” (recognizable words and phrasing) for building a speech user interface that will receive, recognize and act on spoken input to the associated software application.