CSS Speech Module Level 3

undated publication URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-speech
current status: Last Call Working Draft (18/08/2011) http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-css3-speech-20110818
latest editor's draft: http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-speech/
issue tracker: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Tracker/products/29

Last Call Working Draft, Disposition of Comments

dated publication URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-css3-speech-20110818
announcement on public “www-style” mailing-list: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Aug/0550.html

Closure states: an issue can be closed as Accepted, OutOfScope, Invalid, Rejected, or Retracted.

Color nomenclature: (Verified indicates commentor's acceptance of the response):

Color	Description
ISSUE X	Accepted or Rejected [Verified]
ISSUE X	Rejected [not Verified]
ISSUE X	OutOfScope or Invalid [not Verified]
ISSUE X	Formal Objection

ISSUE 1

Summary: ISSUE 1: interaction between the 'voice-volume' property and the loudness of 'cue' properties
Status: CLOSED [Accepted]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: clarify multiple informative statements that misleadingly firmly associate SSML features with CSS-Speech properties + correct editorial glitch which results in a whole paragraph being normative rather than informative + improve (shorten) the said informative paragraph (as per the email proposal). (Note, WG was waiting for commenter's reply, see http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0719.html or http://logs.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-11-23 )
Raised By: Paul Bagshaw paul.bagshaw@orange-ftgroup.com (Co-author of SSML 1.1 and PLS 1.0)
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Aug/0494.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0189.html
Comment 2: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0503.html
Response 2: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0507.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0526.html (heads-up #1)
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0554.html (heads-up #2)
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0805.html (heads-up #3 with summarised proposal)
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Dec/0081.html (commenter's agreement ⇒ Verified)

Issue 2

Summary: ISSUE 2: 'languages' attribute needed for voice selection with the 'voice-family' property
Status: CLOSED [Rejected] (deferred)
Resolution: Working Group consensus: defer to later revision due to technical considerations in Level 3 (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0482.html or http://logs.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-12 )
Raised By: Paul Bagshaw paul.bagshaw@orange-ftgroup.com (Co-author of SSML 1.1 and PLS 1.0)
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Aug/0495.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0107.html
Comment 2: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0502.html
Response 2: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0505.html
Comment 3: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0510.html
Response 3: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0512.html
Comment 4: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0513.html
Response 4: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0515.html
Comment 5: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0516.html
Response 5: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0517.html
Comment 6: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0519.html
Response 6: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0520.html
Response 7: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0518.html
Response 8: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0510.html
Comment 7: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0511.html (commenter's agreement ⇒ Verified)
Remarks: voice-language solution, similar to http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-fonts/#font-language-override-prop, as illustrated by Fantasai: voice-language: auto | <language-code> | inherit; inherited: yes; computed value: as specified; with auto ⇒ The used value is taken from the language of the selected element, or some UA-chosen value if unknown. The computed value is the keyword 'auto'.

Issue 3

Summary: ISSUE 3: Renaming the 'voice-volume' property to 'volume-voice'
Status: CLOSED [Rejected]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: do not rename property, to preserve consistency (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: Christoph Päper christoph.paeper@crissov.de
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Aug/0552.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Sep/0109.html (proposal: reject renaming)
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0525.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0606.html (notification of Working Group consensus / resolution)
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0499.html (commenter's agreement ⇒ Verified)

Issue 4

Summary: ISSUE 4: Not dropping the "at-risk" voice-* properties
Status: CLOSED [Invalid]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: “at-risk” is just an indication of risk, not the intent to drop the feature (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: Gregory Rosmaita gregory.rosmaita@gmail.com
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0010.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0019.html
REMARK: commenter is not available to confirm, but the WG resolution is aligned with the commenter's position, so the issue can safely be marked Verified.

Issue 5

Summary: ISSUE 5: 'voice-rate' percentages
Status: CLOSED [Accepted]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: make a minor editorial improvement using the terms “slower” and “faster” to clarify the use of percentages, and to fix the typo “multiplied by 1.2” versus “one and a half times the speaking rate”. (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: Gregory Rosmaita gregory.rosmaita@gmail.com
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0011.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0411.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0608.html (notification of Working Group consensus / resolution)
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0617.html (proposed prose update)
REMARK: commenter is not available to confirm, but the WG resolution is aligned with the commenter's position, so the issue can safely be marked Verified.

Issue 6

Summary: ISSUE 6: 'play-during' or equivalent property
Status: CLOSED [Rejected] (deferred)
Resolution: Working Group consensus: reject 'play-during' feature request, possibly deferred to next major revision (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: Gregory Rosmaita gregory.rosmaita@gmail.com
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0012.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0423.html (agree with design decision to exclude 'play-during', reject need to re-introduce it)
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0609.html (notification of Working Group consensus / resolution)
REMARK: commenter is not available to confirm, but the WG resolution is aligned with a well-established design decision since the very early days (pre-2004 Working Draft) of the CSS Speech Module Level 3, so we think that the issue can be confidently marked Verified.

Issue 7

Summary: ISSUE 7: use of generic SPAN element in voice-stress example and client-side use question
Status: CLOSED [Accepted]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: make a minor editorial improvement so that the example uses 'em' instead of 'span'. However, the HTML default user-agent stylesheet remains out-of-scope (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: Gregory Rosmaita gregory.rosmaita@gmail.com
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0013.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0414.html
Remark: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0422.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0610.html (notification of Working Group consensus / resolution)
REMARK: commenter is not available to confirm, but the WG resolution is aligned with the commenter's position, so the issue can safely be marked Verified.

Issue 8

Summary: ISSUE 8: no longdesc for the aural formatting model diagram
Status: CLOSED [Accepted]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: make minor editorial edit to link the diagram to the paragraph above it, using aria:described-by and/or by editing the @alt attribute. (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: Gregory Rosmaita gregory.rosmaita@gmail.com
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0015.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0412.html
REMARK: commenter is not available to confirm, but the WG resolution is aligned with the commenter's position, so the issue can safely be marked Verified.

Issue 9

Summary: ISSUE 9: Appendix B — Index: why such cryptic hyperlink text?
Status: CLOSED [Accepted]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: fix the automatically-generated index, which will improve all the CSS specifications. (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: Gregory Rosmaita gregory.rosmaita@gmail.com
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0016.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0407.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0611.html (notification of Working Group consensus / resolution)
REMARK: commenter is not available to confirm, but the WG resolution is aligned with the commenter's position, so the issue can safely be marked Verified.

Issue 10

Summary: ISSUE 10: aural/speech events/modifications cued by ARIA properties/attributes
Status: CLOSED [OutOfScope]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: out-of-scope (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: Gregory Rosmaita gregory.rosmaita@gmail.com
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0017.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0415.html (valid remark, but out-of-scope)
REMARK: commenter is not available to confirm, but the WG resolution is not conflictual with regards to the commenter's position, so the issue can safely be marked Verified.

Issue 11

Summary: ISSUE 11: relative 'voice-volume' values (e.g. Louder / Softer)
Status: CLOSED [Rejected]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: reject “louder” and “softer” keywords, but agree to improve informative prose (examples) for decibel offsets (as well as for 'voice-rate' percentages) (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: PF-WG, Janina Sajka janina@rednote.net
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0368.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0528.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0613.html (notification of Working Group consensus / resolution)
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0783.html (James Craig jcraig@apple.com is okay with current specification regarding user-configurable values for volume keywords)
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0291.html (commenter's agreement ⇒ Verified)

Issue 12

Summary: ISSUE 12: 'voice-volume' property's 'silent' value
Status: CLOSED [Rejected]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: keep the 'silent' value as-is (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: PF-WG, Janina Sajka janina@rednote.net
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0368.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0529.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0614.html (notification of Working Group consensus / resolution)
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0784.html (acceptance by James Craig jcraig@apple.com)
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0291.html (commenter's agreement ⇒ Verified)

Issue 13

Summary: ISSUE 13: 'speak' and 'speak-as' properties
Status: CLOSED [Rejected]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: keep the two 'speak' properties separated (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: PF-WG, Janina Sajka janina@rednote.net
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0368.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0527.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0615.html (notification of Working Group consensus / resolution)
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0782.html (James Craig jcraig@apple.com will file an issue for iOS5 to support the split 'speak' properties)
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0291.html (commenter's agreement ⇒ Verified)

Issue 14

Summary: ISSUE 14: 'pause-before' and 'pause-after' properties
Status: CLOSED [Rejected]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: not to add restrictions on time values (good authoring practices are out-of-scope). Media Queries, Media Types / Features are out-of-scope too. (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0607.html or http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-10-19 )
Raised By: PF-WG, Janina Sajka janina@rednote.net
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0368.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0537.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0616.html (notification of Working Group consensus / resolution)
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0291.html (commenter's agreement ⇒ Verified)

Issue 15

Summary: ISSUE 15: 'cue-before' and 'cue-after' properties (named sound icons, such as "warning", "error", etc.)
Status: CLOSED [Rejected] (deferred)
Resolution: Working Group consensus: new feature to consider for future level/revision. (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0719.html or http://logs.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-11-23 )
Raised By: PF-WG, Janina Sajka janina@rednote.net
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0368.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0535.html
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0291.html (commenter's agreement ⇒ Verified)

Issue 20

Summary: ISSUE 20: Not dropping the "at-risk" 'voice-balance' property
Status: CLOSED [Invalid]
Resolution: Working Group consensus: not actual specification issue. (See http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0719.html or http://logs.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-11-23 )
Raised By: PF-WG, Janina Sajka janina@rednote.net and James Craig jcraig@apple.com
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0446.html
Response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0504.html
Comment: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0291.html (commenter's agreement ⇒ Verified) [similar issue to 'voice-duration'property]

Testing, Reference Implementations

Existing Prototypal or Semi-Complete Implementations

(support for “aural” and/or “speech” stylesheets, as per the CSS2.1 appendix and/or the previous CSS3-Speech drafts, respectively)

Note that this topic is tracked on the public CSS emailing list (feel free to contribute there): http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Mar/0389.html

Opera: implements some of CSS3-Speech (and non-deprecated CSS2.1 Aural Stylesheets features): http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/presto25/css/properties/ (the documentation lists speech properties up to Opera engine Presto v2.5, see here: http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/productspecs/ )
EmacSpeak: implements CSS Aural Stylesheets: http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net
FireVox: implements some CSS Speech features (has its own CSS parser, because Firefox doesn't support CSS Speech/Aural features), see http://www.firevox.clcworld.net/demos/css_demo.html and http://clc4tts.clcworld.net/css_technical.html
WebKit: implements support for the “speak” property in its core, and I think that there is platform-level support through the accessibility layer (Mac OS X only ?). See http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/LayoutTests/platform/mac/accessibility/css-speech-speak.html and https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46827 (partially supported by VoiceOver in the iOS5 betas)
FormsPlayer (now “ubiquity-xforms”, included in “backplanebx”): for Internet Explorer, provides prosody control via CSS properties (voice, volume, rate, pitch). See http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=speak+package:http://ubiquity-xforms-cpp\.googlecode\.com and http://code.google.com/p/backplanebx/source/browse/XFormsProcessor/content/XFormsProcessor/chrome/
Mozilla Gecko: property parsing, see: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=525444 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47159
Internet Explorer 9: “does not support any of the CSS3 speech properties”: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc351024(v=vs.85).aspx#speech

Points of Interest

Google Chrome (WebKit): “TTS engine” extension, ChromeVox, SSML support, see http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/ttsEngine.html and http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/tts.html and https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kgejglhpjiefppelpmljglcjbhoiplfn and http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-text-to-speech-api-for-chrome.html and http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-htmlspeech/2011Nov/0022.html . Also see IDPF's Readium extension (open-source EPUB reader), at http://readium.org/
WebKit core: support for the Javascript TTS API, see http://speech-javascript-api-spec.googlecode.com/git/speechapi.html and this code changeset: http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/109667
Mozilla Firefox (Gecko): native TTS API? See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687879 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=525444

Test Suite

Related public email discussion:

Cross-cutting concerns, collaboration opportunities

Unified / centralized sound mixer

Complete, original message on [[email protected]] (Audio Working Group): http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-audio/2011OctDec/0039.html
Forwarded message (and response) on [[email protected]] (CSS) and [[email protected]] (HTML Speech): http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0575.html
Potential additional group contacts? [[email protected]] (HTML5), others?

HTML5 default user-agent CSS speech stylesheet

Original request: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0013.html
Group to involve: [[email protected]] (HTML5), [[email protected]] (CSS), [[email protected]] (Hypertext Coordination Group), others?

CSS speech authoring guidelines, good practices

Request for special ARIA handling: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0017.html
Other related requests (limits on volume, rate, pause/rest durations, etc.): http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0368.html
Group to involve: [[email protected]] (WAI Content Guidelines, WCAG), [[email protected]] (WAI Protocol And Formats), [[email protected]] (WAI Liaison), [[email protected]] (CSS), others?

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