The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Shadow DOM. This specification describes a method of establishing and maintaining functional boundaries between DOM subtrees and how these subtrees interact with each other within a document tree, thus enabling better functional encapsulation within DOM. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The XML Security Patent Advisory Group (PAG) has published a report recommending that W3C continue work on the XML Encryption Syntax and Processing Version 1.1 without changes. The PAG did, however, recommend changes to the Candidate Recommendations of XML Signature Syntax and Processing Version 1.1 and XML Signature 2.0 enabling implementations to use alternative algorithms that are still interoperable. W3C launches a PAG to resolve issues in the event a patent has been disclosed that may be essential, but is not available under the W3C Royalty-Free licensing terms. See the original announcement of the PAG.

Today W3C and JTC 1, a joint technical committee of ISO and IEC, announced formal approval of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 as an ISO/IEC International Standard, ISO/IEC 40500. "This important accessibility standard, which is already widely deployed internationally, can now benefit from additional formal recognition from ISO/IEC national bodies," noted Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO. "Such recognition is expected to increase internationally harmonized uptake of WCAG 2.0 by governments, business, and the broader Web community."

ISO/IEC 40500 is exactly the same as the original WCAG 2.0 Standard from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Supporting resources that provide practical advice for meeting ISO/IEC 40500 / WCAG 2.0 are freely available from the WCAG Overview. Read the full press release, learn more about W3C's PAS Submitter status in the W3C PAS FAQ, and comment on the blog post.

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Implementing ATAG 2.0: A guide to understanding and implementing Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. Implementing ATAG 2.0 is a planned Note to support ATAG 2.0. ATAG defines how authoring tools should help developers produce accessible web content that conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. It also defines how to make authoring tools accessible so that people with disabilities can use them. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The WebFonts Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of WOFF File Format 1.0. This document specifies the WOFF font packaging format. This format was designed to provide lightweight, easy-to-implement compression of font data, suitable for use with CSS @font-face rules. Any properly licensed TrueType/OpenType/Open Font Format file can be packaged in WOFF format for Web use. User agents decode the WOFF file to restore the font data such that it will display identically to the input font. Comments are welcome through 08 November. Learn more about the Fonts Activity.

The Semantic Web Interest Group has published a Group Note of Microdata to RDF. HTML microdata is an extension to HTML used to embed machine-readable data into HTML documents. Whereas the microdata specification describes a means of markup, the output format is JSON. This specification describes processing rules that may be used to extract RDF from an HTML document containing microdata. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of CSS Counter Styles Level 3. This module introduces the ‘@counter-style’ rule, which allows authors to define their own custom counter styles for use with CSS list-marker and generated-content counters. It also predefines a set of common counter styles, including the ones present in CSS2 and CSS2.1. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The XML Core Working Group has published two Documents today:

• A First Public Working Draft of XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.1.This document specifies a processing model and syntax for general purpose inclusion. Inclusion is accomplished by merging a number of XML information sets into a single composite infoset. Specification of the XML documents (infosets) to be merged and control over the merging process is expressed in XML-friendly syntax (elements, attributes, URI references).
• A Group Note of Associating Schemas with XML documents 1.0 (Third Edition). This document allows schemas using any schema definition language to be associated with an XML document by including one or more processing instructions with a target of xml-model in the document's prolog.

Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.