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Language – Accessibility Guidelines

Accessibility 18F GSA
Table of Contents

Setting the language of your site allows assistive technology to interact with your content correctly. Assistive technology will read foreign languages, but it needs to know the main language of the page and when any content’s language differs from the default language for the page.

Testing>

Testing #

  1. Open the inspector panel.
  2. Locate the main html tag.
    • If the lang attribute isn’t set to the correct language, this is a failure.
  3. Identify any content that differs from the default language. Make sure the content has its own lang attribute set with that language.
    • Any alternate language content not set constitutes a failure.
Examples>

Examples #

Failure>

Failure #

Sus ojos son verdes.

This text is Spanish and lacks a lang attribute.

Passes>

Passes #

Sus ojos son verdes.

This text passes because the lang=“es” attribute identifies its content as Spanish.