Accessibility - Language
Clarify natural language usage
When natural language changes are appropriately marked up in a document, speech synthesizers and Braille devices can automatically switch to the new language, making the document more accessible to multilingual users. It also enables search engines to find key words and identify documents in a desired language.
When mixing languages in a sentence or paragraph, as in this example, note the language changes like this:
He's asking you if you're well. He's saying, <span lang="fr">"Comment allez vous?"</span>
Even if you are not producing documents in other languages, you should develop the habit of putting the language code for English in your files. This tag goes in the initial <HTML> tag at the top of your web document, as indicated below.
<HTML lang="en"> to indicate English language
A complete list of language codes is available at the Code for the Representation of the Names of Languages|. From ISO 639, revised 1989. Source: OASIS - the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards."
For more about language information, see LANG attribute.|
ABBR and ACRONYM should be expanded using the TITLE attribute: eg:
ACRONYM Welcome to the <ACRONYM title="Imaging & Photographic Unit"> IPU| </ACRONYM>Web site.