WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:02.150 - Next, let's cover language. 2 00:00:02.150 --> 00:00:05.520 Most screen readers can read several different languages. 3 00:00:05.520 --> 00:00:08.140 Users select a default language when installing 4 00:00:08.140 --> 00:00:10.180 and configuring their screen reader. 5 00:00:10.180 --> 00:00:12.850 If you don't specify the language of a page, the screen 6 00:00:12.850 --> 00:00:16.210 reader will read it in the user's default language. 7 00:00:16.210 --> 00:00:19.110 Now, the page language and default screen reader language 8 00:00:19.110 --> 00:00:22.330 may happen to match by luck, but if not, it can make the 9 00:00:22.330 --> 00:00:25.370 content difficult or impossible to understand. 10 00:00:25.370 --> 00:00:29.130 Imagine English being read with Spanish pronunciation rules. 11 00:00:29.130 --> 00:00:31.330 In addition to specifying the main page language, 12 00:00:31.330 --> 00:00:34.640 you must also specify the language of parts. 13 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:36.900 For example, you might have a quote in Hindi 14 00:00:36.900 --> 00:00:38.250 on an English page. 15 00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:41.170 You must specify that language change for the quote. 16 00:00:41.170 --> 00:00:42.670 Let's see an example. 17 00:00:42.670 --> 00:00:46.080 Here I'm on the accessibility page of the IRS website. 18 00:00:46.080 --> 00:00:49.160 I'll right click and select view page source. 19 00:00:49.160 --> 00:00:53.120 At the very top, on the HTML element, I see this attribute. 20 00:00:53.120 --> 00:00:56.470 Lang equals en; en stands for English. 21 00:00:56.470 --> 00:00:58.540 So this is the main page language. 22 00:00:58.540 --> 00:01:01.790 The code en comes from a standard list of language codes, 23 00:01:01.790 --> 00:01:03.220 which you must use. 24 00:01:03.220 --> 00:01:06.640 For example, lang equals English is not valid. 25 00:01:06.640 --> 00:01:09.830 Now going back to the page, here we see some links to access 26 00:01:09.830 --> 00:01:11.580 the page in other languages. 27 00:01:11.580 --> 00:01:13.750 And notice those links are written in the languages 28 00:01:13.750 --> 00:01:14.760 themselves. 29 00:01:14.760 --> 00:01:17.680 For instance, Russian is written as русский. 30 00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:20.910 I'm going to right click this link and select inspect. 31 00:01:20.910 --> 00:01:23.960 And here on the link element, I have this attribute, 32 00:01:23.960 --> 00:01:27.510 lang equals ru, which tells me that this link text is written 33 00:01:27.510 --> 00:01:28.640 in Russian. 34 00:01:28.640 --> 00:01:30.747 So you can apply the lang attribute to block level 35 00:01:30.747 --> 00:01:32.423 and inline elements.