RE: Language Shifts (Accessibility, metadata)

You can declare the language(s) of the content in the package document using
dc:language tags.[1] That's what EPUB reading systems will be looking for if
they have the ability to preload TTS languages for a user. Reading systems
(and vendors) will also typically expose the language information in the
publication info if the user wants to manually preload languages.

 

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-tech-111/#publication-lang

 

Matt

 

From: Julie Jacques [Affiliate] <julie.jacques@affiliate.mcgill.ca> 
Sent: July 10, 2025 1:13 PM
To: public-schemaorg@w3.org
Subject: Language Shifts (Accessibility, metadata)

 

Hello, 

 

I'm curious to know if anyone has thoughts about declaring which languages
are used in an EPUB so that readers using TTS know which languages they
would need to download on their OS or enable on their mobile devices to
ensure proper pronunciation by a screen reader. 

 

Our copyright pages are already quite long and we wonder if readers just
skip over them anyways and would miss the information. 

 

We have a 1,000-character limit in the accessibilitySummary field which is
already getting quite long and would be restrictive for those titles which
have over ten languages being used.  

 

Would love to hear from anyone about thoughts on this. 

 

Thanks 

 

Julie Jacques (she/her)

Digital Publishing Assistant 

McGill-Queen's University Press

1010 Sherbrooke Street West, Suite 1720, Montreal, QC H3A 2R7

julie.jacques <mailto:kathleen.c.fraser@mcgill.ca> @affiliate.mcgill.ca

mqup.ca <http://mqup.ca/>  | @McGillQueensUP

McGill-Queen's University Press in Montreal is on land which long served as
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territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabek. We acknowledge and thank
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on which peoples of the world now gather.