The Internationalization Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Ethiopic Layout Requirements. This document describes requirements for the layout and presentation of text in languages that use the Ethiopic script when they are used by Web standards and technologies, such as HTML, CSS, Mobile Web, and Digital Publications. By publishing this first Working Draft we invite feedback and participation from interested parties. Learn more about other layout requirements initiatives in progress.

The Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group and SVG Working Group have published a First Public Working Draft of Graphics Accessibility API Mappings, along with updated Working Drafts of WAI-ARIA Graphics Module and SVG Accessibility API Mappings.

The WAI-ARIA Graphics Module defines core roles specific to web graphics that allow an author to express the logical structure of the graphic to assistive technologies. Graphics Accessibility API Mappings defines how user agents map roles in this module to the features of accessibility APIs. SVG Accessibility API Mappings provides additional mappings specific to Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). When supported by user agents, these specifications will enable authors to create more accessible rich internet applications and graphics, including charts, graphs, and other drawings. Please send comments by 30 September 2016. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Social Web Working Group invites implementation of two Candidate Recommendations:

• Activity Streams 2.0: This specification details a model for representing potential and completed activities using the JSON format. It is the goal of this specification to provide a JSON-based syntax that is sufficient to express metadata about activities in a rich, human-friendly but machine-processable and extensible manner. This can include constructing natural-language descriptions or visual representations about the activity, associating actionable information with various types of objects, communicating or recording activity logs, or delegation of potential actions to other applications.
• Activity Vocabulary: The Activity Streams 2.0 Vocabulary defines a set of abstract classes and properties that describe past, present and future Activities. This document defines the Activity vocabulary and its properties.

The Web Annotation Working Group has published a Candidate Recommendation for three documents:

• Web Annotation Data Model: This specification describes a structured model and format, in JSON, to enable annotations to be shared and reused across different hardware and software platforms. Common use cases can be modeled in a manner that is simple and convenient, while at the same time enabling more complex requirements, including linking arbitrary content to a particular data point or to segments of timed multimedia resources.
• Web Annotation Vocabulary: specifies the set of RDF classes, predicates and named entities that are used by the Web Annotation Data Model. It also lists recommended terms from other ontologies that are used in the model, and provides the JSON-LD Context and profile definitions needed to use the Web Annotation JSON serialization in a Linked Data context.
• Web Annotation Protocol: This document describes the transport mechanisms for creating and managing annotations in a method that is consistent with the Web Architecture and REST best practices.

This is a re-publication, without substantial change, of the Candidate Recommendation published on the 5th of July for the Data Model and Vocabulary, and on the 12th of July for the Protocol. The only significant change (beyond some minor editorial clarifications and changes) is that the respective exit criteria for the Candidate Recommendation phase is now documented in the publications themselves.

Candidate Recommendation means that the Working Group considers the technical design to be complete, and is seeking implementation feedbacks on the documents. There is a separate document how to use them and report on implementation results. The group is keen to get comments and implementation experiences on these specifications, either as issues on the Group’s GitHub repository or by posting to public-annotation@w3.org.

The group expects to satisfy the implementation goals (i.e., at least two, independent implementation for each of the test cases) by September 30, 2016.