Identify Languages

Overview

University sites generally identify each page's language as English.

This means screen readers will pronounce all text on the page as if it was written in English. For non-English text, the result is unintelligible.

If you are authoring content inside of a page that is a language other than English, you will have to identify the language of that section or quote. Most content management systems provide a button for this.

Best Practices

Apply a language tag to any language other than English.

Example

When we don't tag other languages, non-English words will have an English pronunciation.

Watch the video of a screen reader reading a Spanish sentence. In the first instance, the sentence is not tagged with the appropriate language tag. In the second example, the sentence has a Spanish tag applied.

When the screen reader reads Spanish without the a language tag, it reads as gibberish because it does not adhere to proper Spanish pronunciation. When the language is tagged appropriately, it will be pronounced correctly.

Applying Language Tags in Site Builder

In Site Builder, highlight the text in a language other than English, click the Choose Language drop-down menu, and select the appropriate language.

Now screen readers will know how to read the text appropriately.