- Success Criterion 3.1.2
- Conformance level AA
No Way to Programmatically Tell Which Language a Passage Uses
3.1.2 — Language of Parts
Scenario
Setting
A bank's mobile money-transfer screen
What’s wrong
A Spanish-language help article is embedded inside the English transfer screen with no lang attribute marking the switch, so a screen reader keeps reading it with English pronunciation rules.
Example
<p>Please visita nuestra tienda.</p>Why it matters
Screen-reader users hearing mixed-language content with the wrong voice rules.
How to test
Inspect any passage in a different language from the page: check whether its containing element has its own correct lang attribute — if not, it fails.
How to fix
The passage in another language must carry its own correct lang attribute.
<p>Please visit <span lang="es">nuestra tienda</span>.</p>A lang attribute on the foreign-language span switches the screen reader's pronunciation for just that phrase.
Outcome
On a bank's mobile money-transfer screen, this barrier is gone for screen-reader users hearing mixed-language content with the wrong voice rules — they can finish what they came here to do.
Who is affected
Screen-reader users hearing mixed-language content with the wrong voice rules.
Learn more
- Understanding Understanding document (opens in a new tab)
Related scenarios
- Foreign-Language Quote or Phrase With No Language Attribute
- Language Switcher Link With No Language Tag of Its Own
- Mixed-Language Legal or Product Text Left Entirely Unmarked
- Language Attribute Copy-Pasted Onto the Wrong Piece of Text
- Bilingual Layout Where One Column’s Language Goes Unmarked
- User-Generated Content in Another Language Never Tagged