The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAWG) today published updated Working Drafts of User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0 and Implementing UAAG 2.0. UAAG defines how browsers, media players, and other "user agents" should support accessibility for people with disabilities and work with assistive technologies. UAAG 2.0 is updated to better address mobile devices and input by speech, touch, and gesture. See the call for review e-mail for a summary of changes. Comments are welcome through 9 November 2012. Learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Audio Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Web Audio Processing: Use Cases and Requirements. This document introduces a series of scenarios and a list of requirements guiding the work of the W3C Audio Working Group in its development of a web API for processing and synthesis of audio on the web. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Device APIs Working Group and Web Applications (WebApps) Working Group have jointly published a Working Draft of Web Intents Addendum - Local Services. This specification is an addendum to Web Intents, that defines how Web Intents enabled User Agents can discover and communicate with local Web Intents Services. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity, and the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Device APIs Working Group has published a Working Draft of Network Service Discovery. This specification defines a mechanism for an HTML document to discover and subsequently communicate with HTTP-based services advertised via common discovery protocols within the current network. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

W3C announced today the sixth MultilingualWeb workshop in a series of events exploring the mechanisms and processes needed to ensure that the World Wide Web lives up to its potential around the world and across barriers of language and culture. To be held 12–13 March 2013 in Rome, this workshop is made possible by the generous support of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. Anyone may attend at no charge and the W3C welcomes participation by both speakers and non-speaking attendees. Early registration is encouraged due to limited space.

Building on the success of five highly regarded previous workshops in Madrid, Pisa, Limerick, Luxembourg, and Dublin, this workshop will emphasize the application of theory and technology to meet practical needs. The workshop brings together participants interested in the best practices and standards needed to help content creators, localizers, language tools developers, and others meet the challenges of the multilingual Web. It provides further opportunities for networking across communities that span the various aspects involved. We are particularly interested in speakers who can demonstrate novel solutions for reaching out to a global, multilingual audience. Registration is available online.

The Tracking Protection Working Group has published two Working Drafts today.

• Tracking Preference Expression (DNT).This specification defines the technical mechanisms for expressing a tracking preference via the DNT request header field in HTTP, via an HTML DOM property readable by embedded scripts, and via properties accessible to various user agent plug-in or extension APIs. It also defines mechanisms for sites to signal whether and how they honor this preference, both in the form of a machine-readable tracking status resource at a well-known location and via a Tk response header field, and a mechanism for allowing the user to approve site-specific exceptions to DNT as desired.
• Tracking Compliance and Scope. This specification defines the meaning of a Do Not Track (DNT) preference and sets out practices for websites to comply with this preference.

Learn more about the Privacy Activity.

The Device APIs Working Group has published a Group Note of Web API Design Cookbook. This document captures common practices in designing APIs that fit well into the Web platform as a whole, using WebIDL. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

W3C announced today the launch of the System Applications Working Group, whose mission is to define a runtime environment, security model, and associated APIs for building Web applications with comparable capabilities to native applications. See the System Applications Working Group Charter for more information, and read more about the Ubiquitous Web Domain.