Aural Stylesheets

CSS2 let you give your page a voice, a pitch, and a position in three dimensional space around the listener's head.

In 2026: Dead. No mainstream browser ever implemented aural stylesheets, and CSS 2.1 demoted the whole chapter to an appendix. Screen readers went their own way entirely. azimuth and elevation, which placed a paragraph's voice above and to the left of your head, remain the most ambitious CSS properties never to render anywhere.

Where it came from: CSS2 chapter 19, Aural style sheets, W3C 1998. Demoted to an informative appendix in CSS 2.1. W3C ↗

<style>
@media aural {
  h1     { voice-family: male; pitch: low; richness: 90; }
  p      { azimuth: center-left; elevation: above; }
  .shout { volume: x-loud; speak: spell-out; }
  .aside { play-during: url(harp.mid) repeat; }
}
</style>

<h1>This heading has a deep male voice.</h1>
<p>This paragraph is positioned to your upper left in 3D space.</p>
<p class="shout">THIS ONE IS SPELLED OUT AT FULL VOLUME.</p>
<p class="aside">This one has harp music playing under it.</p>