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How to target a braille / screen-reader via CSS

I'm using a webfont to display icons on a website. It works great visually — scalable, printable, and lightweight.

But there's a big accessibility issue: screen readers interpret them as regular characters.

For example, this code:

<span>i</span> Info 
<span>t</span> Contact

Looks fine to sighted users, but a screen reader reads it as "iInfo", "tContact", etc. — which is confusing.

My question:

Is there a way to target only screen readers (or braille devices) via CSS?

I came across this W3C spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/media.html#media-types

...but I'm unsure if it actually works in real-world scenarios.

Update (based on tests):

:before / :after → Some screen readers (e.g., macOS VoiceOver) do read the content out loud.

@media braille, speech → No effect on VoiceOver (tested in Safari & Chrome).

speak: none; → No noticeable effect in VoiceOver or NVDA (confirmed).

Has anyone found a reliable way to hide visual-only icon fonts from screen readers?

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1

ah this is a pretty sexy solution. In this way blind people could skip the icon and at least its announced as such

meo
– meo

2011年12月13日 10:01:27 +00:00
Commented Dec 13, 2011 at 10:01
1

Interesting. What does Mac OS X do with it?

stringy
– stringy

2011年12月14日 01:55:33 +00:00
Commented Dec 14, 2011 at 1:55
1

@stringy macos reads it out loud like everything else... :/ But still, i think its the best solution until now...

meo
– meo

2011年12月14日 08:53:13 +00:00
Commented Dec 14, 2011 at 8:53

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How to target a braille / screen-reader via CSS

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