Companies | Financial Times

Currencies | Financial Times

Financials | Financial Times

US | Financial Times

Americas | Financial Times

Technology | Financial Times

China | Financial Times

Telecoms | Financial Times

Africa | Financial Times

Application Error

Every page should precisely specify what language(s) it is written in. 

## Why this matters

Screen readers, which read out the text on a page, need to know the language to 
pronounce it correctly. Without the language, text may sound like gibberish. 

For example: imagine a computer pronouncing just one German word
"die" (pronounced "dee") using English pronunciation. Now extend that to every
word on the page.

Search engines may also use the language to classify pages, so this can have
an effect on SEO as well.

## How to fix

The `<html>` element should have a `lang` or `xml:lang` attribute which describes 
the language of the page.

You will usually want to use the `lang` attribute as follows:

```html
<html lang="en-US">
```

(Note this example won't work for XHTML, which is deprecated and highly discouraged).

Make sure you specify a [valid language code](http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/bcp/bcp47.txt).

## More information

See [Technique H57](https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20161007/H57).

html-lang-required

June 2024

May 2024

Financial Times

Title / URL	Issues
Companies \| Financial Timeswww.ft.com/companies	1
Currencies \| Financial Timeswww.ft.com/currencies	1
Financials \| Financial Timeswww.ft.com/financials	1
US \| Financial Timeswww.ft.com/us	1
Americas \| Financial Timeswww.ft.com/americas	1
Technology \| Financial Timeswww.ft.com/technology	1
China \| Financial Timeswww.ft.com/china	1
Telecoms \| Financial Timeswww.ft.com/telecoms	1
Africa \| Financial Timeswww.ft.com/africa	1
Application Errorwww.ft.com/invented-url-for-404-page	1

Specify the language of every page

Financial Times

Where this issue has occurred