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Language of Page

Language of Page

The default human language of each Web page can be programmatically determined.

WCAG 3.1.1 (opens in a new tab)

Screen readers and other automated tools need to be told what the language of the page is so it can distinguish between words and pronunciations. For example, "manger" is a very different word in French than it is in English.

Way to fix

Add the lang attribute to the html tag to specify the language of the page.

<html lang="fr">
  <body>Nous allons manger des fruits</body>
</html>
 
<html lang="en">
  <body>He was given fruits in the manger</body>
</html>

It is also possible to add the lang attribute to a specific element to specify the language of that element to satisfy the WCAG 3.1.2 (opens in a new tab) requirement.

Resources