Language Attribute Demo - Information For This Demo

Quick tip: The tools can detect when a language is not specified, but are not able to tell you if the correct language is specified. You will need to verify the language yourself.

How to test this issue

Testing the language of a page

  • Test Technique: WAVE.
    • WAVE will report an error if there is no lang attribute in the HTML tag for the page.
    • Note: WAVE only confirms the existence of a language attribute, but cannot determine if correct language is set. To confirm the language is correct, you can inspect the code or listen to the page with JAWS to verify the text is pronounced correctly.

Testing language changes within a page

  • Test Technique: Visual scan, JAWS, and code inspection.
    • Either visually scan or read the page with JAWS, and look for any cases where the text changes form one language to another.
    • Inspect the code to confirm the proper lang attribute is set, or listen to the page with JAWS to verify each section of text is pronounced correctly.

    Note: Knowledge of languages may be required to effectively test this requirement.

Failing WCAG Guidelines

For this demo, the following WCAG guidelines fail:

  • 3.1.1: Language of Page
  • 3.1.2: Language of Parts