Multilingual texts

Impact: Strong

Users mainly impacted: Blind, severely visually impaired, mentally and cognitively handicapped.

RGAA criteria: Criterion 8.3 [A] - Criterion 8.4 [A] - Criterion 8.7 [AA] - Criterion 8.8 [AA]

Explanation

A blind user, who is visually impaired or has difficulty reading, browses a website using a screen reader. Screen reader makes a sound restitution of words, so it is important that the vocal synthesis pronounces in the language defines the words it encounters in order to be understood.

A web page has a main language, this is defined on the html tag When a word or group of words are in a language different from the language of the document, it is necessary to specify it with the attribute lang.

Defining the language of a document:

<html lang="en">

Changing the language on a text:

<p>The <abbr lang="fr" title="Référentiel général d'amélioration de l'accessibilité">RGAA</abbr> is the French government's General Guideline for Accessibility Improvement.</p>

There are exceptions, proper names, an imaginary language, a common name for a foreign language in the dictionary.