Identifying the language of a web page, as well as the language of its individual parts, helps to ensure that screen readers will correctly pronounce the content.
The Default Language of a Canvas Course
In Canvas, language can be defined at the course level, within the course Settings.
This affects all of the built-in content in Canvas for that course, including the course menu items, button labels, and other text. The underlying HTML is properly coded so screen readers, if they support the language of the course, will pronounce all content correctly.
Defining Language of Parts in Canvas
Currently, the Rich Text Editor in Canvas does not provide a means for identifying the language of selected text that differs from the language of the page. Therefore, if content changes from the default language, the only way to identify the language of the content is to do so in the HTML Editor using HTML code as explained below.
Defining Language in HTML
In HTML the language of content is identified using the lang attribute, the value of which is a standard BCP 47 Language Code. For example the following tag identifies the entire HTML document as being an English:
<html lang="en">
If a paragraph, table cell, list item, or any other block of text changes from the default language of the page, that too must be marked up with a lang attribute. For example, imagine that our English document contains a short paragraph in French, as in the following example:
<p lang="fr">Vaut mieux prévenir que guérir.</p>
