As the web continues to be the medium for all users, standards bodies need to continue to provide new APIs to enrich user experience and accessibility. One underused API for unsighted users is speechSynthesis, an API to programmatically direct the browser to audibly speak any arbitrary string.
The Code
You can direct the browser to utter speech with window.speechSynthesis and SpeechSynthesisUtterance:
window.speechSynthesis.speak(
new SpeechSynthesisUtterance('Hey Jude!')
)
speechSynthesis.speak will robotically tell the user anything you provide as a SpeechSynthesisUtterance string. Support for this API is available in all modern browsers.
I wouldn’t consider speechSynthesis as a replacement for native accessibility tools, but this API could be used to improve what native tools provide!
5 More HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed
The HTML5 revolution has provided us some awesome JavaScript and HTML APIs. Some are APIs we knew we’ve needed for years, others are cutting edge mobile and desktop helpers. Regardless of API strength or purpose, anything to help us better do our job is a…
Send Text Messages with PHP
Kids these days, I tell ya. All they care about is the technology. The video games. The bottled water. Oh, and the texting, always the texting. Back in my day, all we had was…OK, I had all of these things too. But I still don’t get…
RealTime Stock Quotes with MooTools Request.Stocks and YQL
It goes without saying but MooTools’ inheritance pattern allows for creation of small, simple classes that possess immense power. One example of that power is a class that inherits from Request, Request.JSON, and Request.JSONP: Request.Stocks. Created by Enrique Erne, this great MooTools class acts as…
Source link
