It is necessary to inform the language of the target content of an internal or external link before activating it. This information helps avoid confusion, improve reading experience and facilitate navigation, especially for people using assistive technologies.

Objectives

• Allow readers and players, including voice synth tools, to anticipate a change of language when navigating through a digital book.
• Avoid readers accessing a section or content they don’t understand the language, clearly indicating the target language in advance.

Implementation

• The target language of a link can be indicated directly in its label, written in the target language, in order to anticipate the language change.
• It can also be indicated by an appropriate icon (symbol, visual indicator such as a flag), accompanied by the appropriate alternative text.
• It can finally be specified explicitly in the wording of the link or in its immediate context, by clearly mentioning the target language in the text or information surrounding the link.

Control

• Manually identify links where the content of the target section or document is not written in the same language as the current section.
• For each of these links, verify that the reader is immediately informed of the target content’s language, either through the link text (written in the target language), an appropriate visual indicator, or an explicit indication in the link’s context.