CSS Aural Reference

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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 error
  • 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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