{"id":21,"date":"2014-08-28T14:27:55","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T18:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/?p=21"},"modified":"2017-12-31T12:48:56","modified_gmt":"2017-12-31T17:48:56","slug":"avoid-using-flags-to-designate-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/avoid-using-flags-to-designate-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoid using flags to designate languages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Web designers use flags as a convenient shorthand to stand for languages on multilingual websites. For example, a site available in French, English, Spanish and Japanese might show a French flag, a Union Jack (or an American flag), a Spanish flag and a Japanese flag. Unfortunately there are a lot of problems<\/strong> that the use of flags in language selectors invites, especially for languages that are used by several countries<\/strong>, like German, Spanish, English, French and Chinese.<\/p>\n

There are lots of people who may be offended \u2013 or at the very least, perturbed \u2013 by an American flag to represent English: Canadians, British people, Australians and New Zealanders for example (and you may also offend Americans who recognise their dialect doesn\u2019t represent the totality of the English-speaking world<\/a>). A Union Jack for English may offend or confuse non-British, but English-speaking, users like Americans, South Africans, Canadians and Irish people. If you want to mark a specific dialect of a language, write something like Portugu\u00eas do Brasil<\/em> or Portugu\u00eas brasileiro<\/em> rather than using a Brazilian flag. And sometimes the flag doesn\u2019t even match the dialect being used; examples include websites that have an English option that\u2019s marked with the Union Jack, but the site itself is full of American spellings (or vice versa, where the American flag is used, but the English variant used is a Commonwealth version), or even worse, Brazilian Portuguese websites that use the flag of Portugal (which can confuse European or African Portuguese-speakers visiting the site and expecting European Portuguese).<\/p>\n

Not to mention there are some countries that have multiple languages<\/strong>: India, China, Belgium, Nigeria, South Africa, Switzerland and Canada, for example. What language would you choose if you used an Indian flag? It could represent Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, English or Kannada, amongst others.<\/p>\n

Bad:<\/strong><\/p>\n