Audience: AT vendors and developers Subject: Pronunciation in HTML

The W3C's Pronunciation Task Force aims to give authors control over pronunciation in HTML. This innovation will benefit many technologies, including smart speakers, read-aloud tools, and assistive technology (AT).

We identified multiple possible solutions for improving pronunciation on the web. We would like your opinions about two strategies for choosing a preferred solution.

Smart speakers can harvest text and markup from the web and provide support for app developers to use SSML. Read-aloud tools may use the Web Speech API for speech synthesis and can utilize SSML in supported contexts.

When it comes to AT, we have two possible strategies:

1. AT will process pronunciation information from the accessibility tree (AxTree) provided by the browser. This should allow AT to implement enhanced pronunciation without significant changes to the architecture. This approach requires work to map SSML-in-HTML to the AxTree and accessibility APIs.

2. AT will parse the SSML-based pronunciation information from the DOM, directly. This approach is currently possible without additional work by others to support it. This may require significant changes in AT architecture.

Please let us know which approach you prefer for your products and the users you serve. If you have any public feedback for our group, use our publicly archived email list: public-pronunciation@w3.org or open an issue on Github. If you have private feedback, you can send an email to group-apa-chairs@w3.org