HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Finally, you can set the
speak
property to
spell-out
, which spells out
each word. This is useful for acronyms and abbreviations. For example,
using:
acronym { speak : spell-out }
ensures that acronyms such as URL get translated aurally as "you-are-
ell" and not as "earl."
By default, the
speak-punctuation
property is set to
none
, causing punc-
tuation to be expressed as pauses and inflection in the generated
speech. If you give this property the
code
value, punctuation is spoken
literally. This might be useful for aurally reproducing programming code
fragments or literal transcriptions of some content.
[*]
[*]
Regrettably, there is no
victor-borge
mode for this property. Perhaps CSS3 will address this
egregious oversight.
The
speak-numeral
property defaults to the value
continuous
, meaning
that numerals are pronounced as a single number. Accordingly, the
number "1234" would be reproduced as "one thousand two hundred
thirty-four." When set to
digits
, the numbers are pronounced digit by
digit, such as "one, two, three, four."
8.4.12.3. Voice characteristics
To create a richer listening experience, CSS2 defines a number of prop-
erties that alter the spoken content. This lets you use different voices for
different content, speed up the speech, and change the pitch and stress
levels in the speech.
The
speech-rate
property accepts a numeric length value that defines
the number of words spoken per minute. The default value is locale
dependent because different cultures have different notions of a "nor-
mal" rate of speech. Instead of a specific value, you may use any of
