- 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
<div class="help-panel">
<h2>Need help?</h2>
<p>Para transferencias internacionales, el tipo de cambio se actualiza cada hora.</p>
</div> Why it matters
A screen reader keeps using English pronunciation on the embedded Spanish sentence, turning exchange-rate guidance into a garbled string a user can't act on.
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
Tag any embedded passage with lang the moment it switches language, even inside an otherwise single-language page.
<div class="help-panel">
<h2>Need help?</h2>
<p lang="es">Para transferencias internacionales, el tipo de cambio se actualiza cada hora.</p>
</div> Outcome
A user reviewing transfer help hears the Spanish passage switch to a correctly accented voice.
Who is affected
Screen reader users who don't read Spanish visually rely entirely on correct pronunciation to even recognize the passage is in another language.
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