1. A method of improving speech capabilities of a multimodal application, the method implemented with a multimodal browser and a speech engine operating on a multimodal device supporting multiple modes of user interaction with the multimodal application, the modes of user interaction including a voice mode and one or more non-voice modes, wherein the voice mode includes accepting speech input from a user, digitizing the speech, and providing digitized speech to a speech engine available to the multimodal browser for recognition, and wherein the non-voice mode includes accepting input from a user through physical user interaction with a user input device for the multimodal device; wherein the multimodal browser comprises a module of automated computing machinery for executing the multimodal application and the multimodal browser supports execution of a media file player, a module of automated computing machinery for playing media files; the method comprising: receiving, by the multimodal browser, a media file having a metadata container; retrieving, by the multimodal browser, from the metadata container a speech artifact related to content stored in the media file for inclusion in the speech engine available to the multimodal browser; determining whether the speech artifact includes a grammar rule or a pronunciation rule; if the speech artifact includes a grammar rule, modifying, by the multimodal browser, the grammar of the speech engine to include the grammar rule; and if the speech artifact includes a pronunciation rule, modifying, by the multimodal browser, the lexicon of the speech engine to include the pronunciation rule.