CSS Reference Aural — CSS

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:

Example Code

css

Try it Yourself

@media aural {

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.

Note: The aural CSS media type is deprecated.

CSS Aural Reference

Property	Description	Values
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
cue	Sets the cue properties in one declaration	cue-before cue-after
cue-after	Specifies a sound to be played after speaking an element's content	none url
cue-before	Specifies a sound to be played before speaking an element's content	none url
elevation	Sets where the sound should come from	angle below level above higher lower
pause	Sets the pause properties in one declaration	pause-before pause-after
pause-after	Specifies a pause after speaking an element's content	time %
pause-before	Specifies a pause before speaking an element's content	time %
pitch	Specifies the speaking voice	frequency x-low low medium high x-high
pitch-range	Specifies the variation in the speaking voice. (Monotone voice or animated voice?)	number
play-during	Specifies a sound to be played while speaking an element's content	auto none url mix repeat
richness	Specifies the richness of the speaking voice. (Rich voice or thin voice?)	number
speak	Specifies whether content will render aurally	normal none spell-out
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
speak-numeral	Specifies how to speak numbers	digits continuous
speak-punctuation	Specifies how to speak punctuation characters	none code
speech-rate	Specifies the speed of the speaking	number x-slow slow medium fast x-fast faster slower
stress	Specifies the "stress" in the speaking voice	number
voice-family	Specifies the voice family of the speaking	specific-voice generic-voice
volume	Specifies the volume of the speaking	number % silent x-soft soft medium loud x-loud