Slides: Mind Your Lang at London Web Standards

Tonight I had the pleasure of returning to London Web Standards to speak (I was there last April). I presented a deep dive into the lang attribute, a topic for which developers have been begging for a deep dive. Or not.

Anyway, the slides as promised (or view the slides directly at Slideshare):

I was only one of two speakers. I link to the other speaker below in the tweets.

Tweets

There was some Twitter activity, which I always appreciate.

Listening to @dmitrigrabov at @webstandards #LWSReturn discuss how to write code for use by developers (you and others). pic.twitter.com/omzkp1EUIL

.@aardrian is about to give an entire talk about a single #HTML attribute!

This pleases the markup nerd in me immensely.#lwsReturn @webstandards pic.twitter.com/Gnp2wcFydD

people were not using the lang attribute because they didn't understand what it would do for them @aardrian #lwsreturn

if you set the lang attribute the validator will check the dir attribute to see if they're compatible @aardrian #lwsreturn

Does your dir match your lang?

Thanks to @aardrian I just leart that the @w3c validator will tell you if it doesn't!#webdev #lwsReturn pic.twitter.com/U3cM8C5J3W

#TIL there is a spellcheck attribute caniuse.com/#search=spellc… #lwsReturn @aardrian

you can use the :lang psuedo selector to load the correct typeface for the language @aardrian #lwsreturn

.@aardrian is sharing great benefits of using the lang attribute in your HTML:
– In-browser spellcheck
– CSS selectors like ::first-letter
– Translation tools
– Font selection for CJK languages pic.twitter.com/XoJH5eKvy1

…more reasons to use lang:
– #a11y, e.g. to indicate parts of a page in different language to the rest
– Formatting delimiters in number fields
– Hyphens for splitting long words (using CSS hyphens: auto;)
– Quote marks (with <q> and <blockquote>)#lwsReturn

…even more lang benefits:

– screenreaders (#a11y) will adjust pronounciation or at least announce the language! pic.twitter.com/wnmWU8DjAA

Mind blown of the impact the correct use of the lang attribute has on accessibility. Brilliant talk by @aardrian. @webstandards #lwsReturn

Really enjoyed @aardrian's talk on the #HTML lang attribute.

We need more talks like this – there are *so* many little-known benefits that HTML can give you "for free"!

Also, hearing VoiceOver speak English with a French accent was priceless!#lwsReturn @webstandards

@aardrian @webstandards great talk last night, many thanks 👍

Many thanks to @WiproDigital for hosting us last night instagram.com/p/BhoyzA-BF_k/
Fabulous talks by @dmitrigrabov & @aardrian
See you all next month

@aardrian last night gave "The best talk about a single HTML attribute" lang="…"