Forum Discussion
Change HTML source language in Rise course
Dear community,
We developed an e-learning in Dutch using Articulate Rise and have gotten it tested on accessibility. One of the comments on the course was that in the HTML of the course the source language is shown as English ("html lang=en"), even though the full course is in Dutch. This results in screen readers selecting the language as English instead of Dutch which causes issues in, for example, wrong pronunciation of words. To overcome this users will have to manually select a different language on their screen readers.
I am wondering whether there is some kind of way to fix this and change the source language? Anyone experience with this?
Many thanks for your help!
28 Replies
Great that there is a workaround - thank you. In addition adding my support to this cause as we need a easy solution that enables us to change the language directly in the Rise file and for that change to actually save. I think that having to remember to add the script each time we republish the course can easily be forgotten.
We create courses for the public sector and have faced the same issue with the language in Rise. We have to change the language tag manually every time. It is mandatory to fulfill the accessibility criteria in EU, so I am adding my vote for this error to be corrected asap. Thank you.
Thanks for adding your voice here, HanneJacobsen-7! You’re right to call out how critical this is, especially for public sector courses and compliance with EU accessibility requirements.
At the moment, Rise doesn’t offer a way to reliably define and persist the HTML source language in the published output, which can cause screen readers to use the wrong language and pronunciation. While there are workarounds, like scripts or translation workflows, we understand those aren’t ideal or sustainable, particularly when courses are republished.
I’ve shared your feedback with our product team so they can see how important it is to be able to set and save the correct language tag directly in Rise. We really appreciate you highlighting the real accessibility impact this has.
Hi HanneJacobsen-7,
Quick clarification to my earlier reply here.
We released a fix that resolves an issue where the HTML language attribute stayed set to en after translating a Rise course. When authors translate their course using XLIFF, including translating both the course content and labels, the correct page language is now set in the published output, as long as a supported ISO language code is used.
That said, there are still limitations. If only custom labels are used (without full XLIFF translation), there isn’t currently a way to customize the HTML language attribute. We recognize how important this is for accessibility compliance, and feedback like this continues to be shared with our product team.
Thanks for raising this and for your patience as we keep improving this area.
