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Whole page

Page language is missing or invalid

WCAG 2.2 success criterion 3.1.1 Language of Page (Level A)

WCAG 2.2
3.1.1 Language of Page
Level
A
Default severity
Error
Available in
Free

Why it matters

Screen readers choose their voice and pronunciation from the page language. Without it, a Spanish page may be read with English pronunciation and become very hard to follow. Browsers also use it to offer translation and to pick the right hyphenation and quotation marks.

Who it affects: Keyboard, screen reader and low-vision users — every visitor meets the page title, language, landmarks, keyboard focus, target sizes and zoom settings on every page.

13.5% of the top million home pages had missing page language in 2026. WebAIM Million 2026

What Lumtera flags

Checked in review mode's Whole page tab, on the page as your theme renders it: an <html> element with no lang attribute, or one whose value is not a valid language code (for example lang="english" instead of lang="en").

How to fix it in WordPress

Set Settings → General → Site Language, and make sure the theme prints language_attributes() on its <html> element. Almost every theme does; if yours does not, ask the theme author.

Example

Flagged on the rendered page
<html>
Fixed
<html lang="en-US">

How to check your fix

  1. Reload the page in review mode and run the Whole page tab again. The finding disappears once the rendered page passes.
  2. Load the page and press Tab: a "Skip to content" link should appear first, and you should always see where focus is, even under a sticky header. Pinch-zoom on a phone, and check the browser tab shows a meaningful title.

Check your pages with Lumtera

This check is free. Open any post, choose Accessibility in the admin bar, then the Whole page tab: Lumtera checks the page as your browser renders it, theme, menus and footer included, one page at a time. Lumtera Pro also checks the page language on a daily or weekly schedule, fetching up to 25 key pages and templates from the server as a logged-out visitor, and emails you (or posts to Slack) when a new error appears.

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