Quality Web Standards
Daniel Dardailler
W3C Director for Europe
Minerva Conference, Parma, Nov 2003.
W3C Exec Summary
The International Web Standardization Organization,
creator of HTML, XML, HTTP, Web Services, Semantic Web technologies, WAI
Guidelines, etc.
- Mission: Lead the Web to its full
potential
- Goals: Interoperability, Universality,
Functionalities
- How: Industry driven + Government Grants,
Neutral/nonforprofit, consensus based, fast process
- What: Working groups, working drafts, Open source
reference code
- ~400 members (150 in Europe), ~70 staff (25 in Europe)
- 3 hosts: MIT/ERCIM/Keio and 13 Offices (Europe, Africa, Asia, etc)
- Director Tim Berners-Lee, Web Inventor
Web original technologies
HTTP : the transfer protocol
GET /index.html HTTP/1.1
Accept-Charset: iso-8859-5, unicode-1-1
HTML/XML: the format of choice
<title> Web History </title>
<p> A paragraph of text </p>
URL: the addressing system: the glue
http://www.w3.org/People/danield
news:comp.windows.x
mailto:danield@w3.org
What does W3C do?
- Provide a neutral forum for meeting
- Technically expert from industry doing specification
editing
- Achieve consensus
- Reference open source code where appropriate
- End results: Working Drafts and Recommendations
W3C Web Technologies and Activities
Building the Foundation for the Web
W3C Quality Assurance Activity
- Formalized in 2001 at the request of W3C members
- Produce guidelines used internally to improve the W3C working group
processes, specifications and testing methodologies.
- Maintain a variaty of resource, like the Matrix.
- Promote and educate on the importance of following Web standards
- Is open and need even more participants!
WAI background
- Launched in 1997, multi-stakeholders (industry, goverment, disabibility
group, research), cross-disability
- Review of Web specifications
- Accessibility Guidelines for Web Content, Browser, AuthoringTools,
XML
- Accessibility Education & Outreach
- Tools development and R&D tracking.
WAI Update
- WCAG 1.0 a huge success, WCAG 2.0 on its way..
- ATAG 1.0 and UAAG 1.0 are building up momentum
- Policy development: harmonization is paramount!
- Evaluation/Certification is appearing
- Lots of support materials freely available
Benefits of using Web Standards
- Guarantee of vendor independence (both software/hardware)
- Guarantee of interoperability (internally and externally)
- Guarantee of universality (language, culture, disability)
- Guarantee of evolvability
- Guarantee of durability
Benefits of W3C membership
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Public Resources