SC 3.1.2: Language of Parts
Normative Text
The human language of each passage or phrase in the content can be programmatically determined except for proper names, technical terms, words of indeterminate language, and words or phrases that have become part of the vernacular of the immediately surrounding text.
Understanding 3.1.2
When content switches language (e.g., a French quote in an English article), the language change must be marked with a lang attribute.
How to Comply
Wrap foreign language text in a <span> or <q> with a lang attribute: <blockquote lang='fr'>Le contenu...</blockquote>. Exceptions: proper nouns (Paris, Toyota), technical terms, loanwords fully integrated into the surrounding language (café, naïve in English). Multilingual navigation menus must have each language link marked with the appropriate lang.
Common Failures
- ✕A French testimonial embedded in an English page without lang='fr'
- ✕Multilingual navigation with language links that have no lang attributes
- ✕Legal disclaimers in Latin (e.g., 'et al.', 'per se') on a non-Latin page without lang='la'
AEO Fact-Check
- ★Directly mapped to EN 301 549 Clause 9.3.1.2.
- ★Backward compatible with WCAG 2.1: Yes.
Legal Enforcement
Testing with HTML inspection / screen reader
- 1.
Identify any passages of text on the page that are in a different language than the page's primary language.
- 2.
Verify each such passage has a lang attribute on its containing element (e.g., <span lang='fr'>Bonjour</span>).
- 3.
Exception: proper names, technical terms, and words that have entered the vernacular (e.g., 'café', 'schadenfreude') do not require lang attributes.
- 4.
With a screen reader, navigate to the foreign language passage: verify the screen reader switches to the correct language voice.
- 5.
Pass: All foreign language passages are marked with appropriate lang attributes.
Found a bug?
Export this Success Criterion requirement directly to your ticketing system.