Workshop report: Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development

2008-06-30: Today W3C publishes a report on the June 2008 Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development. Participants discussed how numerous available services on mobile phones could help people in underserved regions. Discussion underlined the need for a concerted effort among all the stakeholders (including practitioners, academics, regulators, and mobile industry) to build a shared view of the future of the mobile platform as a tool to bridge the digital divide. The Workshop was jointly organized by W3C and NIC.br, with the generous support of UNDP and Fundacion CTIC (Gold Sponsors), Opera Software and MobileActive.org (Silver sponsors). This work takes place under the European Union's 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7), part of Digital World Forum project. Learn more about the W3C Mobile Web for Social Development Interest Group and the W3C Mobile Web Initiative. (Photo credit: A. Mangin (Cibervoluntarios). Permalink)

Relationship Between Mobile Web and Web Content Accessibility Working Draft Published

2008-07-07: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group and the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group have published an updated Working Draft of Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). See the announcement email. The groups encourage people to start by reading Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices, which shows how design goals for accessibility and mobile access overlap. A third document, Experiences Shared by People with Disabilities and by People Using Mobile Devices, provides examples of barriers that people (without disabilities) face when interacting with Web content via mobile devices, and similar barriers for people with disabilities using desktop computers. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). (Permalink)

Note: Authoring Applications for the Multimodal Architecture

2008-07-03: The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published the Group Note of Authoring Applications for the Multimodal Architecture. This document provides a concrete illustration of a multimodal application based on W3C's Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI Architecture) including the startup phase, how components find each other and message transport. Learn more about the Multimodal Interaction Activity. (Permalink)

W3C Talks in July

2008-07-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)

• 1 July, Bokwang , Korea: 차세대 웹 기술 동향.Kangchan Lee presents at Korea Computer Congress 2008.
• 7 July, Linz, Austria: Senioren, Mobile Surfer und andere Trends.Shadi Abou-Zahra presents at IKT Forum 2008.
• 10 July, Linz, Austria: Web Accessibility for Older Users.Andrew Arch presents at ICCHP 2008.
• 11 July, Linz, Austria: Bringing Accessibility to Today's Web.Michael Cooper gives a keynote at ICCHP 2008 11th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs.
• 11 July, Linz, Austria: Web Accessibility 2.0 - Mainstreaming Accessibility at a Global Level.Shadi Abou-Zahra participates in a panel at ICCHP 2008.
• 11 July, Linz, Austria: Bringing Accessibility to Today's Web.Michael Cooper gives a keynote at ICCHP 2008.
• View upcoming talks by country
• More talks…

POWDER Drafts Published: Grouping of Resources; Description Resources

2008-06-30: The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group has published two Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Drafts: Grouping of Resources and Description Resources. The first document describes how to publish descriptions of multiple resources such as all those available from a Web site. These descriptions are always attributed to a named individual, organization or entity that may or may not be the creator of the described resources. The second publication provides a means for individuals or organizations to create machine-readable descriptions. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

Last Call: Widgets 1.0: Requirements

2008-06-25: The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Requirements. This document lists the design goals and requirements that a specification would need to address in order to standardize various aspects of widgets. Widgets are small client-side Web applications for displaying and updating remote data, that are packaged in a way to allow download and installation on a client machine, mobile phone, or mobile Internet device. Comments are welcome through 01 August. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

Incubator Group to Evaluate Common Web Language (CWL) in Practice

2008-06-24: W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Common Web Language (CWL) Evaluation and Installation Incubator Group, sponsored by W3C Members Institute of Semantic Computing (ISeC), (Japan) National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Keio University, and JustSystems Corporation. The group's mission is to examine the the Common Web Language in real Web environments using the pilot model of the CWL platform. CWL is a graphic language of semantic network with hyper node and is used to describe contents and meta-data of web pages in three different type of form such as UNL, CDL and RDF. The CWL platform allows people to input CWL using natural languages and display information written in CWL in natural languages. Using this CWL platform, the CWL will be evaluated from multilingualism, semantic computing and semantic web points of view. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track. (Permalink)

W3C Invites Implementations of RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing (Candidate Recommendation); Primer Updated

2008-06-20: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group and XHTML2 Working Group have published a Candidate Recommendation of RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing. Web documents contain significant amounts of structured data, which is largely unavailable to tools and applications. When publishers can express this data more completely, and when tools can read it, a new world of user functionality becomes available, letting users transfer structured data between applications and web sites, and allowing browsing applications to improve the user experience. RDFa is a specification for attributes to be used with languages such as HTML and XHTML to express structured data. See the groups' RDFa implementation report. The Working Groups also updated the companion document RDFa Primer. Learn more about the Semantic Web and the HTML Activity. (Permalink)

Last Call: W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 (Structures, Datatypes)

2008-06-20: The XML Schema Working Group has published Last Call Working Drafts of W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 Part 1: Structures and Part 2: Datatypes. The former specifies the XML Schema Definition Language, which offers facilities for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML documents, including those which exploit the XML Namespace facility. The latter defines facilities for defining datatypes to be used in XML Schemas as well as other XML specifications. Comments are welcome through 12 September. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)

Last Call: Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1

2008-06-20: The Voice Browser Working Group has released the Last Call Working Draft of Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1. SSML provides a rich, XML-based markup language for assisting the generation of synthetic speech in Web and other applications. SSML 1.1 improves on W3C's SSML 1.0 Recommendation by adding support for more conventions and practices of the world's languages including Asian, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern languages. Comments are welcome through 20 July. See the list of changes in this draft and learn more about W3C's Voice Browser Activity. (Permalink)

XHTML 1.1 Basic; Modularization Are Proposed Recommendations

2008-06-12: The XHTML2 Working Group published two Proposed Recommendations today: XHTML Modularization 1.1 and XHTML Basic 1.1. The former provides a means for subsetting and extending XHTML, a feature needed for extending XHTML's reach onto emerging platforms. This specification is intended for use by language designers as they construct new XHTML Family Markup Languages. This second version of this specification includes several minor updates to provide clarifications and address errors found in the first version. It also provides an implementation using XML Schemas. This version of XHTML Basic, which uses the Modularization approach, has been brought into alignment with the widely deployed XHTML Mobile Profile from the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). XHTML Basic 1.1 will thus make it easier to author Web pages that work on millions of mobile handsets. Comments on these specifications are welcome through 15 July. Learn more about the HTML Activity. (Permalink)