What the platform learned to ask

12 features · 4 still unavailable

Every media feature by which a page can ask what a person needs, dated by Baseline.

The finding. The platform learned to ask about the device thirteen months before it learned to ask about the person. Hover and pointer reached Baseline on 11 December 2018; prefers-reduced-motion on 15 January 2020. Vestibular disorders did not begin in 2020. And three accommodations are specified but still unavailable — reduced data, reduced transparency, inverted colours — so the asking is not finished.

11 December 2018 about the device
- any-hover none | hover bundled
- any-pointer none | coarse | fine bundled
- hover none | hover bundled
- pointer none | coarse | fine bundled
15 January 2020 about the person
- prefers-color-scheme light | dark
- prefers-reduced-motion no-preference | reduce
31 May 2022 about the person
- prefers-contrast no-preference | less | more | custom
12 September 2022 about the person
- forced-colors none | active
not yet specified, not available
- inverted-colors none | inverted
- nav-controls none | back no Baseline entry
- prefers-reduced-data no-preference | reduce
- prefers-reduced-transparency no-preference | reduce

Thirteen months. The four interaction features — can this person hover, is the pointer coarse — reached Baseline on 11 December 2018. The first question about the person, prefers-reduced-motion, reached it on 15 January 2020. Both answers were needed for as long as there have been screens. Only one of them was asked first, and it was the one about the hardware.

Four of the twelve are still not available: reduced data, reduced transparency, inverted colours, and a navigation-controls query too new to have a Baseline entry at all. A stated need with no date is the sharpest row in this table.

Feature	Asks about	Values	Since	Widely
`any-hover` bundled	about the device	none \| hover	2018	2021-06-11
`any-pointer` bundled	about the device	none \| coarse \| fine	2018	2021-06-11
`hover` bundled	about the device	none \| hover	2018	2021-06-11
`pointer` bundled	about the device	none \| coarse \| fine	2018	2021-06-11
`prefers-color-scheme`	about the person	light \| dark	2020	2022-07-15
`prefers-reduced-motion`	about the person	no-preference \| reduce	2020	2022-07-15
`prefers-contrast`	about the person	no-preference \| less \| more \| custom	2022	2024-11-30
`forced-colors`	about the person	none \| active	2022	2025-03-12
`inverted-colors`	about the person	none \| inverted	specified, still unavailable	—
`nav-controls`	about the device	none \| back	specified, still unavailable	—
`prefers-reduced-data`	about the person	no-preference \| reduce	specified, still unavailable	—
`prefers-reduced-transparency`	about the person	no-preference \| reduce	specified, still unavailable	—

20182020202220242026

Placed on one axis, the thirteen months are visible. Hover and pointer sit at December 2018; prefers-reduced-motion sits more than a year to their right. The platform learned to ask about the device before it learned to ask about the person, and the distance between those two dots is that sentence.

Dates are Baseline “newly available” — the day the last of the core browsers shipped it, which is the first day a page could ask the question and expect an answer. 4 features carry no web-features entry of their own and were resolved through a bundled feature’s per-key Baseline data; they are marked. Features that are specified but not Baseline are kept as rows with no date rather than dropped — a stated need with no date is the sharpest row here.

What this cannot tell you.

A date is when a page could first ask, not when anyone answered. Baseline records browser support. It says nothing about whether operating systems exposed the setting, whether people found it, or whether sites honoured it.
Four of the interaction features have no web-features entry of their own and were dated through a bundled entry’s per-key data. They are marked bundled in the table.
nav-controls is specified and has no Baseline entry at all — it is too new to be dated here, not undated by omission.
The families are the specification’s own sections, with one exception: inverted-colors is filed by the spec under Color, not under User Preferences, and is admitted here by name because it is plainly an accommodation. Every row carries the section it actually came from.
This is a register of questions, not of needs. The needs are older than all of these dates, and a feature that does not exist is not evidence that nobody needed it.

Source. CSS Media Queries Level 5 × web-features · W3C Document Licence · CC0 · retrieved 2026-08-14. This collection is derived · two sources joined.

The documents. CSS Media Queries Level 5 · web-features (Baseline)

The building

The desk

What the platform learned to ask