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Re: Screen reader testing on language switching components.

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From: Steve Green
Date: Apr 28, 2025 9:55AM

It depends on what the objective of the test is. When testing for WCAG conformance, there is no need to use a screen reader at all. You just look at the "lang" attributes in the switcher and in the resulting pages. You need to check for "lang" attributes throughout the pages, not just in the html element.

If you want to go beyond a WCAG audit and test the user experience, things get really messy because the screen reader behaviour will depend on the synthesizer(s) that are installed. Each synthesizer only supports a selection of languages, maybe only one language. Screen readers can be set to switch between languages automatically, but this only works if both languages use synthesizers from the same vendor.

If you have synthesizers from different vendors, you need to switch language manually. Depending on what the languages are, it may not be possible to get all the synthesizers from the same vendor.

If you have checked that all the "lang" attributes are correct, you only need to do a minimal amount of screen reader testing - I typically only test a few words. To check the "lang" attributes, I usually search the DOM and use some custom CSS with the Stylus browser extension to visually show where the "lang" attributes are on a page. There are probably other tools and bookmarklets that do the same.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd