CSS Aural Reference

Aural Style Sheets

Aural style sheets use a combination of speech synthesis and sound effects to make the user listen to information, instead of reading information.

Aural presentation can be used:

by blind people
to help users learning to read
to help users who have reading problems
for home entertainment
in the car
by print-impaired communities

The aural presentation converts the document to plain text and feed this to a screen reader (a program that reads all the characters on the screen).

An example of an Aural style sheet:

h1, h2, h3, h4 {
voice-family: male;
richness: 80;
cue-before: url("beep.au")
}

The example above will make the speech synthesizer play a sound, then speak the headers in a very rich male voice.

CSS Aural Reference

The "CSS" column indicates in which CSS version the property is defined (CSS1 or CSS2).

Property	Description	Values	CSS
azimuth	Sets where the sound should come from	angle left-side far-left left center-left center center-right right far-right right-side behind leftwards rightwards	2
cue	Sets the cue properties in one declaration	cue-before cue-after	2
cue-after	Specifies a sound to be played after speaking an element's content	none url	2
cue-before	Specifies a sound to be played before speaking an element's content	none url	2
elevation	Sets where the sound should come from	angle below level above higher lower	2
pause	Sets the pause properties in one declaration	pause-before pause-after	2
pause-after	Specifies a pause after speaking an element's content	time %	2
pause-before	Specifies a pause before speaking an element's content	time %	2
pitch	Specifies the speaking voice	frequency x-low low medium high x-high	2
pitch-range	Specifies the variation in the speaking voice. (Monotone voice or animated voice?)	number	2
play-during	Specifies a sound to be played while speaking an element's content	auto none url mix repeat	2
richness	Specifies the richness of the speaking voice. (Rich voice or thin voice?)	number	2
speak	Specifies whether content will render aurally	normal none spell-out	2
speak-header	Specifies how to handle table headers. Should the headers be spoken before every cell, or only before a cell with a different header than the previous cell	always once	2
speak-numeral	Specifies how to speak numbers	digits continuous	2
speak-punctuation	Specifies how to speak punctuation characters	none code	2
speech-rate	Specifies the speed of the speaking	number x-slow slow medium fast x-fast faster slower	2
stress	Specifies the "stress" in the speaking voice	number	2
voice-family	Specifies the voice family of the speaking	specific-voice generic-voice	2
volume	Specifies the volume of the speaking	number % silent x-soft soft medium loud x-loud	2

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