CSS-Speech

by Leonie Watson

In these times when almost every device and platform is capable of talking to you, you may be surprised to learn that there is no way for authors to design the aural presentation of web content, in the way they can design the visual presentation. Once this was largely an accessibility issue. Now it's something much broader than that. Edge, Firefox, and Safari, all make it possible for someone to listen to content, and there are extensions that bring the same capability to Chrome. In these days of voice interaction on every platform, there is a growing expectation that it should be possible to design that experience just like we can the visual experience. In the same way an organisation chooses a logo and colour palette for its website, it stands to reason that they may also choose a particular voice that represents their brand.