This translation has not been editorially reviewed yet. The German version is authoritative. Deutsche Fassung
Accessibility
When do foreign-language words on a website need to be tagged?
Foreign-language words must be tagged as soon as whole sentences, quotes, or sections are in a different language than the rest of the page. The tag is an invisible note in the source code that tells a screen reader: please switch pronunciation here. Naturalised individual words such as "newsletter" or "update" need no tag. WCAG criterion 3.1.2 governs this.
What tagging foreign-language passages does
Picture a German page with an English customer quote: "The best service we ever had." A screen reader that treats the whole page as German reads this sentence using German pronunciation rules — the blind visitor hears a distorted jumble of sounds and doesn't understand the praise. If the quote carries its own language tag in the source code, the screen reader switches to English pronunciation for that passage and then switches back. The line is easy to draw in practice: individual words that have become part of everyday German stay unmarked. Whole sentences, quotes, foreign-language product descriptions, or an English info box get the tag. For sighted visitors, nothing about the appearance changes.
How the audit service checks the language of passages
The automated check with axe-core reviews all passages that already carry a tag: every language tag within the page must carry a valid code, such as "en" or "fr" — a made-up or mistyped code counts as a violation. The harder question is one no machine can reliably decide: are there foreign-language passages with no tag at all? That would require a program to reliably identify the language of arbitrary pieces of text and distinguish it from naturalised loanwords. That's why our report openly marks this part as a manual check point, and at the Gold Standard level a human reads through the page and judges whether foreign-language sections are correctly tagged.
Examples
English paragraph on the German side
<p>Unser Leitsatz: "Think globally, act locally."</p><p>Unser Leitsatz: <span lang="en">"Think globally, act locally."</span></p>Individual naturalised words (computer, team) do not need labelling; Sentences and quotations in another language.
- Collect every spot on your website with foreign-language sentences: customer quotes, slogans, product texts, embedded reviews.
- Ask your agency to add the matching language tag to these passages in the source code, such as lang="en" for English.
- Leave naturalised individual words such as "team", "service", or "newsletter" untagged — they're part of everyday German usage.
- Set a rule for your editorial team that new foreign-language quotes are always added with a tag.
