# Understanding Language of Page

## In brief

Goal
  Assistive technology can determine the language of a page.
What to do
  Indicate the predominant language on a page.
Why it's important
  People using assistive technology get information in the correct language.

## Intent of Language of Page

The intent of this Success Criterion is to ensure that content developers provide information in the Web page that user agents need to present text and other linguistic content correctly. Both assistive technologies and conventional user agents can render text more accurately when the language of the Web page is identified. Screen readers can load the correct pronunciation rules. Visual browsers can display characters and scripts correctly. Media players can show captions correctly. As a result, users with disabilities will be better able to understand the content.

The default human language of the Web page is the default text-processing language as discussed in Internationalization Best Practices: Specifying Language in XHTML & HTML Content. When a Web page uses several languages, the default text-processing language is the language which is used most. (If several languages are used equally, the first language used should be chosen as the default human language.)

For multilingual sites targeting Conformance Level A, the Working Group strongly encourages developers to follow Success Criterion 3.1.2 as well even though that is a Level AA Success Criterion.

## Benefits of Language of Page

This Success Criterion helps:

- people who use screen readers or other technologies that convert text into synthetic speech;
- people who find it difficult to read written material with fluency and accuracy, such as recognizing characters and alphabets or decoding words;
- people with certain cognitive, language and learning disabilities who use text-to-speech software
- people who rely on captions for synchronized media.

## Examples of Language of Page

Example 1. A Web page with content in two languages
  A Web page produced in Germany and written in HTML includes content in both German and English, but most of the content is in German. The default human language is identified as German (de) by the lang attribute on the html element.

## Resources for Language of Page

- Internationalization Best Practices: Specifying Language in XHTML & HTML Content

## Techniques for Language of Page

### Sufficient Techniques for Language of Page

- Using the lang attribute of the html element

### Additional Techniques (Advisory) for Language of Page

- Specifying the default language in the HTTP header

### Failures for Language of Page