Annex

Fixing Language of Page on Squarespace (WCAG 3.1.1)

The page's language must be declared in the markup: <html lang="de">.

Why it matters

A one-line fix, but when it is missing a screen reader pronounces the page with the wrong language's phonetic rules — German product copy read with English pronunciation is close to unintelligible. It bites hardest on multilingual EU storefronts: if the language switcher translates the content but leaves the lang attribute untouched, every translated version is announced wrongly.

Squarespace — where to look

Settings, Language & Region.

What to do

Match the site language to the actual language of the content.

Verification status

Checked by measuring what a live site published with this platform actually serves. The platform does emit a lang attribute (observed lang="en-US"), so a missing one means the site language setting was never filled in — and a wrong one means it was left at the default while the content is in another language. Measured on 2026-09-03 by fetching a live site published with this platform and reading the markup it served.

Source: https://www.squarespace.com/

Reference themes change. If your store runs a different or older theme, confirm the file before editing it.

How to verify the fix

  1. View source and look at the opening html tag — is lang present?
  2. Switch to another language with the site's own switcher and check the source again. Did lang change?
  3. On a multilingual store, check every locale. Usually only the default one is correct.

Other platforms

The full criterion

Read the full explanation of WCAG 3.1.1 Language of Page, or the formal W3C definition.