The HTML Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Using WAI-ARIA in HTML. Using WAI-ARIA in HTML is a practical guide for developers on how to to add accessibility information to HTML elements using the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) specification, which defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. WAI-ARIA is introduced in the WAI-ARIA Overview. Using WAI-ARIA in HTML is developed by the HTML Accessibility Task Force in coordination with the HTML Working Group and the WAI Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG). Learn more about the HTML Activity and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The CSS Working Group and the SVG Working Group have published a Last Call Working Draft of Geometry Interfaces Module Level 1. This specification provides basic geometric interfaces to represent points, rectangles, quadrilaterals and transformation matrices that can be used by other modules or specifications. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. Comments are welcome through 7 August 2014. Learn more about the Style Activity and the Graphics Activity.

The IndieUI Working Group today published a First Public Working Draft of IndieUI: User Context 1.0 – Contextual Information for User Interface Independence. It defines a set of preferences that users can choose to expose to web applications, and an API for user agents to access the preferences and listen for changes. Users can set preferences for features such as screen size, font size, and color. Users with disabilities can provide information about assistive technologies in use, indicate that the display is in an accessibility mode, and indicate what kind of subtitles and audio descriptions they need. Web applications can use this information to optimize the presentation without a requirement to target a specific device, operating system, or locale. IndieUI: User Context complements IndieUI: Events 1.0 to provide web application developers a uniform way to design web applications that work in a wide range of contexts — different devices (such as mobile phones and tablets), different assistive technologies (AT), different user needs. Comments on this Draft are encouraged by 1 August 2014. Learn more from the IndieUI Overview; read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group has published a Working Draft of Linked Data Platform 1.0 Primer. This primer provides an introduction to the Linked Data Platform (LDP), with examples illustrating the principal concepts such as the notion of an LDP resource and the LDP container and how they can be used by Web clients. Two sample scenarios show how an LDP client can interact with a LDP server in the context of a read-write Linked Data application i.e. how to use HTTP for accessing, updating, creating and deleting resources from servers that expose their resources as Linked Data. Learn more about the Data Activity.

The Web Performance Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Beacon. This specification defines an interoperable means for site developers to asynchronously transfer small HTTP data from the User Agent to a web server. Comments are welcome through 29 July 2014.

The group also updated the Candidate Recommendation of Resource Timing. This specification defines an interface for web applications to access the complete timing information for resources in a document.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The RDF Working Group has published a Group Note of RDF 1.1 Primer. This primer is designed to provide the reader with the basic knowledge required to effectively use RDF. It introduces the basic concepts of RDF and shows concrete examples of the use of RDF. Learn more about the Data Activity.

The Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Linked Data Platform 1.0. This document describes a set of best practices and simple approach for a read-write Linked Data architecture, based on HTTP access to web resources that describe their state using the RDF data model. Learn more about the Data Activity.

The Device APIs Working Group has published three Last Call Working Drafts today:

• Vibration API. This specification defines an API that provides access to the vibration mechanism of the hosting device. Vibration is a form of tactile feedback.
• Ambient Light Events. This specification defines a means to receive events that correspond to a light sensor detecting the presence of a light.
• HTML Media Capture. The HTML Media Capture specification defines an HTML form extension that facilitates user access to a device’s media capture mechanism, such as a camera, or microphone, from within a file upload control.

Comments on these three specifications are welcome through 24 July 2014. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of DOM Parsing and Serialization. This specification defines various APIs for programmatic access to HTML and generic XML parsers by web applications for use in parsing and serializing DOM nodes.

The group also published a Working Draft of Shadow DOM. This specification describes a method of combining multiple DOM trees into one hierarchy and how these trees interact with each other within a document, thus enabling better composition of the DOM.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The HTML Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of HTML5. This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability. Comments are welcome through 15 July 2014.

The group also published a Working Draft of HTML 5.1. HTML was primarily designed as a language for semantically describing scientific documents, although its general design and adaptations over the years have enabled it to be used to describe a number of other types of documents. The main area that has not been adequately addressed by HTML is a vague subject referred to as Web Applications. This standard attempts to rectify this, while at the same time updating the HTML language to address issues raised in the past few years.

Learn more about the HTML Activity.

The Protocols and Formats Working Group today published a First Public Working Draft of Core Accessibility API Mappings 1.1 (Core-AAM), which supports the updated Working Draft of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.1. WAI-ARIA provides an ontology of roles, states, and properties that define accessible user interface elements. WAI-ARIA is designed to improve the accessibility and interoperability of web content, particularly web applications. Core-AAM describes how user agents should expose semantics of content languages to accessibility APIs across multiple content technologies (including much of WAI-ARIA). Core-AAM serves as the basis for other specifications to extend the mappings to specific technologies. Learn more from the call for review e-mail and read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Web Applications Working Group has published three documents today:

• A First Public Working Draft of DOM Level 3 KeyboardEvent key Values. This specification defines the values for the KeyboardEvent.key attribute, which is defined as part of the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Events Specification. The key attribute contains information about the character generated by the key event.
• A First Public Working Draft of DOM Level 3 KeyboardEvent code Values. This specification defines the values for the KeyboardEvent.code attribute, which is defined as part of the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Events Specification. The code value contains information about the key event that can use used identify the physical key being pressed by the user.
• A Working Draft of UI Events. This specification extends the events and features defined in DOM Events Level 3.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Today the W3C announced the final report from the Linking Geospatial Data workshop that was held in London 5 – 6 March 2014.

The report contains a summary of each of the major themes discussed and conclusions arising from them. The workshop was supported by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Google, the UK mapping agency Ordnance Survey and the UK government. W3C’s participation was funded by the EU-funded SmartOpenData project.

Participants included many geospatial experts from both the government and private sectors, and the presented papers focused on integrating geospatial information systems with the Web of Data. Although carefully advertised so as not to promote Linked Data to the exclusion of other methods, this emerged strongly as the preferred technology to enable that integration.

The Workshop report identifies several themes that recurred throughout the discussion. A consensus of the participants was that joint work between W3C and OGC should be pursued to address the needs identified in these themes.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group and the SVG Working Group have published a Working Draft of Web Animations 1.0. This specification defines a model for synchronization and timing of changes to the presentation of a Web page. This specification also defines an application programming interface for interacting with this model and it is expected that further specifications will define declarative means for exposing these features. Learn more about the Style Activity and the Graphics Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of Media Queries Level 4. Media Queries allow authors to test and query values or features of the user agent or display device, independent of the document being rendered. They are used in the CSS @media rule to conditionally apply styles to a document, and in various other contexts and languages, such as HTML and Javascript. Media Queries Level 4 describes the mechanism and syntax of media queries, media types, and media features. The specification extends and supersedes the features defined in Media Queries Level 3. 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 Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Data on the Web Best Practices Use Cases & Requirements. This document lists some use cases, compiled by the Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group, that represent scenarios of how data is commonly published on the Web and how it is used. This document also provides a set of requirements derived from these use cases that have been used to guide the development of the set of Data on the Web Best Practices and the development of two new vocabularies: Quality and Granularity Description Vocabulary and Data Usage Description Vocabulary. Learn more about the Data Activity.

The Internationalization Working Group has published three documents today:

• A Last Call Working Draft of Encoding. While encodings have been defined to some extent, implementations have not always implemented them in the same way, have not always used the same labels, and often differ in dealing with undefined and former proprietary areas of encodings. This specification attempts to fill those gaps so that new implementations do not have to reverse engineer encoding implementations of the market leaders and existing implementations can converge. Comments are welcome through 1 July 2014.
• A Group Note of Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts. This document provides advice to content authors using HTML markup and CSS style sheets about how to create pages for languages that use right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Thaana, Urdu, etc. It explains how to create content in right-to-left scripts that builds on but goes beyond the Unicode bidirectional algorithm, as well as how to prepare content for localization into right-to-left scripts.
• A Group Note of Authoring HTML: Language declarations. Specifying the language of content is useful for a wide number of applications, from linguistically-sensitive searching to applying language-specific display properties. In some cases the potential applications for language information are still waiting for implementations to catch up, whereas in others it is a necessity today. Adding markup for language information to content is something that can and should be done as content is first developed. If not, it will be much more difficult to take advantage of any future developments.

Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of Non-element Selectors Module Level 1. This specification extends Selectors Level 4 and allows selecting other kinds of document nodes than elements. This is useful when selectors are used as a general document query language. Non-element Selectors are not intended to be used in CSS, but only as a separate query language in other host environments. 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.