WEBVTT

002
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.060
I want to talk to you today about language access.

003
00:00:03.440 --> 00:00:08.800
Every year, WebAIM tests the home pages of the top one million websites.

004
00:00:09.180 --> 00:00:12.920
In 2026, the same six failures showed up again.

005
00:00:13.300 --> 00:00:18.260
This episode is about the one that looks smallest: missing document language.

006
00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:23.790
13.5% of home pages never tell the browser what language they’re written in.

007
00:00:24.170 --> 00:00:32.820
It’s one of the only two failures that improved this year. But across a million sites, that’s still about 135,000 pages.

008
00:00:33.200 --> 00:00:37.170
And it sits alongside five others that mostly got worse.

009
00:00:37.550 --> 00:00:40.970
Here’s a community events page with a Spanish newsletter sign-up.

010
00:00:41.350 --> 00:00:45.530
The page never declares its language, so a screen reader has to guess.

011
00:00:45.910 --> 00:00:50.060
Often it guesses English, and reads the Spanish like this:

012
00:00:50.440 --> 00:00:54.300
[Screen reader, English voice, mispronouncing Spanish] Inscríbase para recibir noticias de eventos comunitarios.

013
00:00:54.900 --> 00:00:58.450
For a Spanish speaker using a screen reader, that’s hard to understand.

014
00:00:58.830 --> 00:01:00.820
Testing for it takes about a minute.

015
00:01:01.200 --> 00:01:11.130
First, view the page source or open developer tools, and check the opening html tag. Is there a lang attribute, and is it the right language?

016
00:01:11.510 --> 00:01:18.010
Second, run an automated checker like WAVE or axe. Both flag a missing or invalid language.

017
00:01:18.390 --> 00:01:24.970
Third, scan the content for passages in another language, like banners, quotes, or notices.

018
00:01:25.350 --> 00:01:27.860
The fix is one attribute, used twice.

019
00:01:28.240 --> 00:01:35.450
Set lang on the html element for the page, then add lang to any passage in a different language.

020
00:01:35.830 --> 00:01:45.210
That meets WCAG success criteria 3.1.1, Language of Page, and 3.1.2, Language of Parts.

021
00:01:45.590 --> 00:01:48.020
Now the screen reader switches voices:

022
00:01:48.400 --> 00:01:52.260
[Screen reader, Spanish voice] Inscríbase para recibir noticias de eventos comunitarios.

023
00:01:52.860 --> 00:01:56.490
So why does that matter? Start with people.

024
00:01:56.870 --> 00:02:04.030
WebAIM also compared pages by their declared language. English pages average 46 errors.

025
00:02:04.410 --> 00:02:10.680
Pages that declare Chinese average about 136, nearly three times as many.

026
00:02:11.060 --> 00:02:17.980
Much of the web’s tooling was built and tested in English first, and people who speak other languages pay for it.

027
00:02:18.360 --> 00:02:28.970
Now, search. Here’s something most people get wrong: Google says it doesn’t use the lang attribute. It works out a page’s language from the visible text.

028
00:02:29.350 --> 00:02:36.900
So lang is for people and their assistive technology. Showing up in search in other languages takes something else.

029
00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:48.090
Give each language its own page and URL, link the versions together with hreflang, and let people switch with a real link instead of an automatic redirect.

030
00:02:48.470 --> 00:02:56.360
Google’s crawler usually comes from the US and doesn’t ask for a language, so translations that only appear on request may never be found.

031
00:02:56.740 --> 00:03:07.080
Accessibility and search overlap in other places too. Google doesn’t grade accessibility directly, but search engines read a page a lot like a screen reader does.

032
00:03:07.460 --> 00:03:17.800
Alt text helps Google understand images. Descriptive link text tells it what’s on the other end. Headings and page titles show how the content is organized.

033
00:03:18.180 --> 00:03:21.990
Fix these for people, and you give search engines a clearer page too.

034
00:03:22.370 --> 00:03:24.430
That’s why we built idioma.chat.

035
00:03:24.810 --> 00:03:36.090
It translates every word and element on the page, including the parts most tools skip: form labels, instructions, error messages, and what assistive technology announces.

036
00:03:36.470 --> 00:03:42.530
And when a PDF isn’t accessible, idioma.chat converts it on request, in the reader’s language.

037
00:03:42.910 --> 00:03:48.530
In the end, language access is about accessibility, and accessibility is language access.

038
00:03:48.910 --> 00:03:54.810
Learn more about these topics at idioma.chat and accessibility.chat. Thank you.