Bug 163836 – AX: Implement SSML phoneme for text-to-speech pronunciation in markup

• Status: NEW
• Component: Accessibility

[James Craig]

Either as an unprefixed attribute:
<p>The guitarist was playing a <span phoneme="beIs">bass</span> that was shaped like a <span phoneme="b&s">bass</span>.</p>

And/or the namespaced variant used by EPUB3: 
<p>The guitarist was playing a <span ssml:ph="beIs">bass</span> that was shaped like a <span ssml:ph="b&s">bass</span>.</p>

More info:
https://github.com/mhakkinen/SSML-issues/blob/master/overview.md

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/28902049>

[James Craig]

Mark, what be the expectation if you used it on an ancestor element? Would this flatten the link, or should browsers ignore it on anything but leaf nodes? Is this edge case specified somewhere?

<p phoneme="təˈmeɪ toʊ">to<a href="#">ma</a>to</p>

[James Craig]

(In reply to comment #2)
> what be the expectation 

Typo: Should have been, "Yarrr! What be the expectation…"

[James Craig]

It doesn't seems like the Pronunciation Task Force has prioritized getting a simple speech pronunciation API. I see a lot of lightweight ideas proposed there then abandoned after SSML or other complications are squeezed in.

https://github.com/w3c/pronunciation/issues

I'm thinking we should close this one if there is no further update soon. 

Perhaps we should consider a WICG incubator for a simple speech pronunciation attribute?