A system and method for delivering information and enabling navigation and playback of the information that is independent of the content in a document, the system and method using a speech recognition interface that includes a tool for document authoring that associates portions of the content with a node, associates each node with at least one other node, assigns nodes identifying data corresponding to associated content, and provides a user interface to access the content of the document. The user interface can be configured to recognize spoken commands, input from a mouse or keyboard, or input from a DTMF source.