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cssmedia-queriesaccessibilitybraille

Are Braille media queries actually used?


I am interested with making my website accessible to the blind/visually impaired? I saw that there is a Braille media query on MDN. And, I believe it works like this:

@media braille {
    // stylesheets for braille
}

I have never seen or heard of any sort of feature in any browser that could use this. So, which browsers actually use this under what conditions? Which of these browsers that use this are most commonly used by blind people?


Solution

  • Mainstream desktop and mobile browsers don't normally use the braille media type because they don't normally output to devices that print Braille.

    There is at least one implementation of the braille media type, by the DAISY consortium, but it's not clear how widely it is used.

    But regardless, braille and most other media types have been deprecated as of Media Queries 41, which says that they must match nothing (i.e. be equivalent to not all). There is currently no media feature replacement for the braille media type, however, probably because there just isn't any demand for such a feature: the vast majority of users with visual impairments use screen readers that narrate text via text-to-speech, and almost no one uses CSS to render Braille in the first place.


    1 Media Queries 3 does not have any normative text on these media types, at all, and so implementations that don't yet follow MQ4 follow CSS2 instead, but for obvious reasons almost never find themselves actually matching these media types anyway.