Title: HTML5 Lang Attribute problems Last modified: August 20, 2016 --- # HTML5 Lang Attribute problems * [html5rules](https://wordpress.org/support/users/html5rules/) * (@html5rules) * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html5-lang-attribute-problems/) * Hi, * I’ve come across something that I can’t find an answer to anywhere else on the web. Feel free to have a look at the website here – h t t p : / / w w w . s o h a i l t e c h . c o m / (without spaces). My design validates perfectly to HTML5. Now what I’m trying to get is make the design accessible to WCAG 2.0 AA. You can test this at [http://achecker.ca/checker/](http://achecker.ca/checker/), first of all, no matter what I do to the theme, I can’t get rid of the XML namespace as I thought that may resolve the issue. The problem is the following: * Check 49: Document has invalid language code. Repair: Add a valid 2 letter or 3 letter language code as defined in the ISO 639 specification to the HTML ‘lang’ attribute. For XHTML, both ‘lang’ and ‘xml:lang’ must be set. Line 1, Column 1: > * You can see that I don’t really want the XML namespace there because it’s HTML5 and like I said, when you look at the source from [http://achecker.ca/checker/](http://achecker.ca/checker/) you can see how it’s changed my code and on the W3C validator the source is just as it should be. * [Eric Mann](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ericmann/) * (@ericmann) * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html5-lang-attribute-problems/#post-2135479) * … if that’s the code, then I don’t see how WordPress could possibly be adding the xmlns declaration. If you had instead: * ``` > ``` * Then I could see something happening. But WordPress itself does not do anything to the `` tag on its own. What plugins are you running? One of them might be forcing the change … or there could be something on your site that’s causing the validator to add it. * [Eric Mann](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ericmann/) * (@ericmann) * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html5-lang-attribute-problems/#post-2135480) * Actually, scratch that. * Turn off your cache! * When I load your page directly in the browser and I view the source, I don’t see any problems with the `` declaration. When I turn on the “show source” option for your validator, I can see the xmlns tag and this code in the footer: * ``` ``` * When the validator tries to access your site, _it’s pulling a static, cached version of the homepage!_ * Thread Starter [html5rules](https://wordpress.org/support/users/html5rules/) * (@html5rules) * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html5-lang-attribute-problems/#post-2135481) * Eric, it’s not the cache, I’ve tried that many times. If I were to remove the‘ lang’ attribute from the header and try the [http://achecker.ca/checker/](http://achecker.ca/checker/) validator again after flushing the cache you can see the change because then the ‘lang’ attribute isn’t there but the XML namespace still is. * > ` declaration before serving the page. I couldn’t dig too far into the code, but my best guess is that it either also forces the `xmlns` tag as well as a result. * The other problem is the validator. It seems to be caching the response from the server. I know you’ve done some work to disable W3TC on your end, and every other validator I can find serves up the appropriate HTML version on the site( without the annoying `xmlns` tag). But the validator you’re using keeps serving up a cached version. * So either the validator is talking to your CDN and pulling down a cached version of the site, or it has its own cached version that’s not working right. * I did verify in 2 other web accessibility scanners, and they don’t see the `xmlns` tag at all. * Thread Starter [html5rules](https://wordpress.org/support/users/html5rules/) * (@html5rules) * [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html5-lang-attribute-problems/#post-2135493) * Yes actually it was completely because of the W3 Total Cache plugin meaning there’s a bug or something there, more specifically it was the Minify feature causing this so I’m looking into it now. * Thanks for everyone’s help! Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total) The topic ‘HTML5 Lang Attribute problems’ is closed to new replies. ## Tags * [html5](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/html5/) * [namespace](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/namespace/) * [wcag](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/wcag/) * [xml](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/xml/) * 11 replies * 3 participants * Last reply from: [html5rules](https://wordpress.org/support/users/html5rules/) * Last activity: [14 years, 12 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/html5-lang-attribute-problems/#post-2135493) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics