Web Accessibility Training

Web accessibility for language variations

This background reading is relevant to all University of Exeter web editors, and describes various situations that can be alleviated by web accessibility practices.

The specifics of how to implement these practices are not covered here. Web editors using University-supported web editing platforms will cover that material as part of their training.

For further details, please refer to supported and unsupported web editing platforms.

Language specifications

UK web accessibility legislation requires the underlying code of public sector webpages to state:

  • the main language of the page.
  • the language of page content in places where it differs from the main stated language (with certain exceptions).
  • if any of these languages should be displayed from right-to-left, as is the case for Arabic and Hebrew.

Rationale

A webpage that is correctly constructed for language criteria, enables various technologies to:

  • present the content in the correct alphabet and written direction, which is particularly important when the content is then converted for braille displays.
  • audibly read the content with the correct pronunciation.
  • provide correct translations for people whose first language is not the same as the content.
  • provide correct dictionary definitions for people who use this facility to help them understand web content.

It also has an added benefit of improving the search engine optimisation (SEO) of a page (the method used by search engines to rank pages).