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Language Setting

The Language setting in the Web Accessibility Toolkit plugin allows you to explicitly define the default language of your website by setting the lang attribute on the <html> element. This can be useful if your theme or other plugins don’t correctly declare the site language, or if you want to override it with a more specific locale like en-NZ or fr-CA.

Setting the language helps assistive technologies like screen readers determine how to pronounce text, making your content more understandable to users.

What accessibility issue does this fix

Many accessibility tools rely on the language of the page to provide accurate speech synthesis, directionality, and other language-specific support. If your site doesn’t declare a valid lang attribute in the HTML, screen readers may default to English or another incorrect language.

This can lead to:

  • Mispronounced content for non-English or localized pages
  • Incorrect assumptions about grammar, punctuation, or reading order
  • Confusion or inaccessibility for multilingual users

By setting the lang attribute properly, you’re meeting WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 3.1.1 — Language of Page.

How does the Language setting affect accessibility

Without a proper lang attribute, screen readers may read text using the wrong language voice. For example, a French website without lang="fr" could be read with an English voice, which makes the content difficult or impossible to understand for native French speakers using assistive tech.

When this setting is used:

  • The <html> tag is updated to include lang="yourvalue".
  • Screen readers will interpret all text on the page as being in the specified language.
  • WCAG 2.1 compliance improves for multilingual or region-specific content.

How to enable the Language setting using Web Accessibility Toolkit

  1. In your WordPress admin, go to Settings > Web Accessibility.
  2. Click on the General tab.
  3. Find the Language field.
  4. Enter a valid language code such as en, en-AU, en-NZ, fr, or de-DE.
    • You can use just a language (en) or a full locale (en-US).
  5. Save your settings.

This will override the default language declaration in your site’s HTML output.

How to confirm that the Language setting is working

  1. Open your site in a browser.
  2. Right-click and choose View Page Source, or open Developer Tools.
  3. Look at the opening <html> tag and confirm it includes lang="yourvalue".
    • For example: <html lang="en-NZ">
  4. You can also test the effect using a screen reader by listening for correct pronunciation of region-specific words.