W3C

Founded by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee in 1994 to:

• Lead the Web to its full potential.
• Design Interoperable Web Standards:
  HTML, CSS, XHTML, SVG, RDF, SOAP, WCAG, etc.

Principles

• Web for Everyone
  • Language, culture, location, user capabilities

• Web on Everything
  • Small to large displays. Fixed to mobile devices. High to low bandwidth.

• Interoperability
  • The Web's components must work together

W3C Technologies

W3C develops standards

• Core: XML, XML Schema, XSLT, XQuery
• Semantic Web: RDF, OWL
• Web Services: SOAP, WSDL
• Accessibility: WCAG, ATAG
• Internationalisation: Character Model
• Interaction: HTML, CSS, SVG, VoiceXML, SSML

How does W3C work?

A member organisation

About 50 working groups

A well-defined and efficient work process

The Voice Browser Working Group

• Biggest group in W3C
• 88 participants in 33 organisations
• Specifications in progress: VoiceXML 2.1, V3, SISR, PLS, CCXML, SCXML

The Recommendation Track

• Working Drafts -> Last Call Working Draft
• Candidate Recommendation
• Proposed Recommendation
• Recommendation

Intellectual Property

• A clear patent policy
• Open and Royalty-Free standards
• Unique in the standards world

Join W3C

Join W3C and help us build better standards

• Make your internationalization requirements known
• Participate in the development of future speech standards
• Good publicity for your organisation

More information

• These slides are available at w3.org/2005/Talks/11-maxf-w3c/
• The Voice Activity page
• About W3C
• W3C brochure