Yes, it screams for a wrapper library. Might take all of 10 minutes to design the API.
http://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr
My longer chapter on detecting HTML5 features ( http://diveintohtml5.org/detect.html ) explains the detection patterns, and shows how to detect things with or without Modernizr. I've been working with the Modernizr developers to expand their detections, and at the same time some of the code in this guide is taken directly from Modernizr.