Language

screenshot of HTML code — Figure 1: Example of a webpage code where English is the primary language and French is secondary language.

The language of a webpage or part of webpage is defined semantically to help screen readers to identify the language of the webpage.

The abbreviations defined in ISO 639-2 standard for various languages are used to define the language of the page. For more information on language codes, refer to ISO 639-2 Language Code List - Codes for the representation of names of languages (Library of Congress) .

An aria-label SHOULD NOT be used to define other language content on the page like specifying accessible name to the controls as it doesn’t get translated when the webpages are localized in different languages.

NOTE:

New to accessibility or uncertain of requirements, it will be helpful to review all sections below.
Already familiar with requirements, skip to the “Working Example” section for sample HTML, CSS and JavaScript (when needed), along with a working demo.

To programmatically define the language of the page lang attribute SHOULD be provided in the <html> element of the HTML code of the page.
For XHTML, both <lang> and <xml:lang> MUST be set.
In case of a different language page, ensure NOT to hardcode accessible names or content through ARIA. Instead, where possible translate the content into a specific language.
For example,
```
<html lang="en-US">
(...)
</html>
```

When more than one language is used on the page, it becomes difficult for screen readers to differentiate between the different languages.
A correct value for lang attribute SHOULD be specified to the container containing the text from other language.
For example,
```
<p lang="fr"> bonjour</p>
```
In case of links targeting to a different language page, the hreflang attribute SHOULD be specified to the <a> element that targets to a different language page. For example, if you are on a page where primary language is English, but on activating a link, it will take to a different language page, the link SHOULD have hreflang attribute.

Language

Language of Page

Language of Parts

Why is it important