CSS2 Aural Reference

From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)

# 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

W3C: The number in the "W3C" column indicates in which CSS recommendation the property is defined (CSS1 or CSS2).

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

2

cue | A shorthand property for setting the cue-before and cue-after properties in one declaration | cue-before cue-after | 2
cue-after | Specifies a sound to be played after speaking an element's content to delimit it from other | none url | 2
cue-before | Specifies a sound to be played before speaking an element's content to delimit it from other | none url | 2

elevation

Sets where the sound/voices should come from (vertically)

angle
below
level
above
higher
lower

2

pause | A shorthand property for setting the pause-before and pause-after 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 in 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 | A prioritized list of voice family names that contain specific voices | specific-voice generic-voice | 2

volume

Specifies the volume of the speaking

number
%
silent
x-soft
soft
medium
loud
x-loud

2

From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)