Page language is missing or not valid

Why does it matter?

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 does Lumtera flag?

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 real language code. The main part must be a registered two-letter code (en, es) or a three-letter code that is not just the long form of a two-letter one, so lang="english" and lang="eng" are reported, while the region after it (en-GB) is not looked up. Both cases are errors.

Check ID page-lang, as shown in review mode and saved results.

How do I 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

<html>

<html lang="en-US">

How do I check the 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.