• Success Criterion 3.1.1
  • Conformance level A

Page’s Declared Language Not Matching Its Actual Content

3.1.1 — Language of Page

Scenario

Setting

A streaming music app's search results

What’s wrong

Wrong lang (template shipped lang="en" on a Hindi/Arabic/French site) — screen readers use wrong speech synthesizer.

Example 

<html lang="en">
<body>
  <h1>खोज परिणाम</h1>
  <p>आपके लिए 24 गाने मिले</p>
</body>
</html>

Why it matters

A screen reader applies English pronunciation rules to these Hindi search results, turning song counts and titles into unintelligible noise.

How to test

Check the html lang attribute against the page's actual content language: a template shipping lang="en" on a Hindi/Arabic/French page fails.

How to fix

When a template is reused across locales, set the lang attribute per locale build, never hard-code it once in the base template.

<html lang="hi">
<body>
  <h1>खोज परिणाम</h1>
  <p>आपके लिए 24 गाने मिले</p>
</body>
</html>

Outcome

A Hindi-speaking listener hears their search results read naturally and finds the right song immediately.

Who is affected

Screen reader users searching in Hindi need the correct language engine, not one built for English phonetics.

Learn more

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