CSS2 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.

CSS2 Aural Reference

The links in the "Property" column point to more useful information about the specific property.

Browser support: NN: Netscape, IE: Internet Explorer, W3C: Web Standard

Property	Description	Values	W3C
azimuth	Sets where the sound/voices should come from (horizontally)	angle left-side far-left left center-left center center-right right far-right right-side behind leftwards rightwards	CSS2
cue	A shorthand property for setting the cue-before and cue-after properties in one declaration	cue-before cue-after	CSS2
cue-after	Specifies a sound to be played after speaking an element's content to delimit it from other	none url	CSS2
cue-before	Specifies a sound to be played before speaking an element's content to delimit it from other	none url	CSS2
elevation	Sets where the sound/voices should come from (vertically)	angle below level above higher lower	CSS2
pause	A shorthand property for setting the cue-before and cue-after properties in one declaration	pause-before pause-after	CSS2
pause-after	Specifies a pause after speaking an element's content	time %	CSS2
pause-before	Specifies a pause before speaking an element's content	time %	CSS2
pitch	Specifies the speaking voice	frequency x-low low medium high x-high	CSS2
pitch-range	Specifies the variation in the speaking voice. (Monoton voice or animated voice?)	number	CSS2
play-during	Specifies a sound to be played while speaking an element's content	auto none url mix repeat	CSS2
richness	Specifies the richness in the speaking voice. (Rich voice or thin voice?)	number	CSS2
speak	Specifies whether content will render aurally	normal none spell-out	CSS2
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	CSS2
speak-numeral	Specifies how to speak numbers	digits continuous	CSS2
speak-punctuation	Specifies how to speak punctuation characters	none code	CSS2
speech-rate	Specifies the speed of the speaking	number x-slow slow medium fast x-fast faster slower	CSS2
stress	Specifies the "stress" in the speaking voice	number	CSS2
voice-family	A prioritized list of voice family names that contain specific voices	specific-voice generic-voice	CSS2
volume	Specifies the volume of the speaking	number % silent x-soft soft medium loud x-loud	CSS2

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