Language & Accessibility

AI and assistive technologies both rely on clear language signals and semantic markup to understand your content.
Defining language, structure, and accessibility metadata helps ensure that your website can be read, summarized, and cited correctly — by both humans and AI.

1) Declare language at every level

Always declare the language of your page in the <html> tag.
If your content includes other languages inside, mark them with inline lang attributes.

<html lang="en">
  <body>
    <p>Welcome to the AI-first Web guide.</p>
    <p><span lang="es">Bienvenido</span> and <span lang="zh">欢迎</span>!</p>
  </body>
</html>

✅ Why it matters

2) Use hreflang for alternate language versions

Each translated page should reference all its siblings in the <head> section:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/en/guide">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://example.com/es/guide">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh" href="https://example.com/zh/guide">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/guide">

💡 Tip: hreflang helps AI and search engines treat all language versions as one conceptual document, rather than duplicates. —

3) How AI chooses citations by language

When AI assistants search and quote information, they prefer sources written in the same language as the user’s query. If your page declares its language properly (lang=”en”, lang=”es”, etc.) and links all translations with hreflang, AI can directly select and cite the correct version — instead of translating or skipping it.

If your site has multiple language versions, each correctly tagged:

If your site lacks language markup or translations:

If you only publish in one language:

In short: AI assistants quote what they can understand natively. The clearer your language structure, the higher your chance to be the cited source, not just the translated one.

4) Declaring global intent (JSON-LD example)

Even if your site currently uses only one language, you can still declare that it’s intended for a global audience. This helps AI include it in multilingual results and prevents language-based exclusion.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "AI-Readable Web Design Principles",
  "inLanguage": "en",
  "intendedAudience": {
    "@type": "Audience",
    "audienceType": "Global readers",
    "geographicArea": {
      "@type": "Place",
      "name": "Worldwide"
    }
  },
  "about": "Guidelines for creating websites understandable by AI systems across languages.",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Michal Kuritka"
  },
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "AI-First Project",
    "url": "https://first.ai"
  },
  "datePublished": "2025-11-07"
}
</script>

What this does

This is useful for technical or educational content that uses English as a universal medium — it keeps your pages visible even when users ask questions in other languages.

5) Accessibility landmarks (ARIA roles)

Use ARIA landmarks to describe key regions of your page. They help both AI and assistive technologies understand layout and navigation.

Element Default role When to add aria-label
<header> banner When multiple headers exist
<nav> navigation To specify type, e.g. aria-label="Pagination"
<main> main Only one per page
<aside> complementary When summarizing or offering context
<footer> contentinfo For global or section footers 
<nav aria-label="Main navigation">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="/docs/">Docs</a></li>
    <li><a href="/about/">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="/contact/">Contact</a></li>
  </ul>
</nav>

6) Labels and descriptions

Interactive elements (forms, buttons, inputs) must always have visible and programmatic labels.

<label for="email">Email address</label>
<input id="email" name="email" type="email" autocomplete="email" placeholder="you@example.com">

Best practices

7) Contrast and clarity

AI-powered visual summarizers and accessibility tools rely on visual clarity and color contrast.

Tools:

8) Captions and transcripts for media

Audio and video need text alternatives — AI often cannot parse sound, but it can process transcripts.

<figure>
  <video controls src="/media/intro.mp4"></video>
  <figcaption>
    Introduction video explaining the principles of the AI-first web.
    Transcript available at <a href="/docs/transcripts/intro">/docs/transcripts/intro</a>.
  </figcaption>
</figure>

10) Quick checklist

Next: see Images & captions to learn how to describe visual information for AI and accessibility tools.