5.2 Identify the primary natural language of a document
New standards released
The New Zealand Web Standards 2.0 were released in March 2009 and replace the previous version, the New Zealand Government Web Standards 1.0 (below). See Meeting the standards for more information.
The Standard
5.2 Use the HTML LANG attribute in the web document’s HTML tag to identify the natural language.
Guide to this standard
In XML, use "XML:LANG". For New Zealand, the natural language is New Zealand English, the LANG value is "EN-NZ".
Example (HTML):
<HTML LANG="EN-NZ">
<HEAD></HEAD> <BODY> ... </BODY>
</HTML>
This standard covers the W3C WAI checkpoint 4.3 for NZ government agencies.
Related Standards
5.1 Identify changes in the natural language of document text
Rationale for this standard
This is predominantly for assistive technologies such as screen text and Braille readers, which need to be informed what the natural language of a web site is.
