W3C Highlights
September 2016

Introduction

A few months ago, we highlighted W3C's particular focus on Web Security and putting the future of the Web on the track of the future of Industry. Our top-level messages this time around are:

• Digital Publishing: Making Web = Publishing truer and truer.
• HTML: bleeding edge, fresh and regular releases.
• Cohesive Web Platform: so many areas are getting traction in W3C —payments, WoT, webRTC, important things in core.

Last but not least, W3C embarked on an internal functional reorganization that better accords with the nature of today’s Web and the expectations of its diverse users, developers, and implementers.

Digital Publishing

W3C continues to steer and build Web technologies where they impact industries. Digital Publishing was one of the first fields to be addressed under the banner of a vertical industry, embracing the industry transformation that the Web offers through integrated experiences across devices.

The Web encapsulates all that civilization needs; and the march of technology continues to be enhanced to meet the new needs. It is the new needs that require everyone's engagement. Digital Publishing is an area W3C has increased focus on this year.

The boundary between digital publications and other Web content is blurring, creating a rich media environment for digital publishing that opens up new possibilities for readers, authors, and publishers. To fully align the publishing industry and core Web technology, the team and the IDPF, having collaborated for many years, are discussing --and since then announced-- W3C and IDPF exploring plans to combine to more quickly advance publishing technologies on the Open Web Platform.

In order to achieve the vision of publishing on the Web, IDPF and W3C have been developing for three years a universal accessible interchange and delivery ecosystem for digital publications, furthering IDPF’s adoption of HTML5 and especially CSS during the development of EPUB 3 which also incorporates SVG and MathML; and collaborated to develop a shared vision of a future PWP, the evolution of EPUB 3. The Digital Publishing Interest Group has just recently published the first draft of a Portable Web Publications Use Cases and Requirements document, that will be a basis of the future evolution of PWP and EPUB. IDPF's work has led to CSS improvements, W3C's work on Web Accessibility is fundamental to the design of accessible electronic publications. W3C will help make EPUB and portable Web publications more visible and credible outside the book publishing industry, while IDPF’s strong connections to the publishing industry will help make the PWP work begun in W3C more relevant and credible for the publishing community. With more of the Web community we will facilitate the broader adoption of the evolution of EPUB 3 as the standard for Web-based portable documents in general.

Read more below.

Application Development: HTML, CSS, Houdini Task Force

HTML is on the bleeding edge, with fresh and regular releases; it is being improved without a pause. HTML5 was released in October 2014 and HTML 5.1 is on track to REC in the Fall 2016. In fact, we are finishing HTML 5.1 and starting HTML 5.2, making regular incremental updates to HTML a reality.

In order to achieve this, HTML 5.1 enters Proposed Recommendation in September. This update (changes are noted in the spec itself) improves upon HTML5, makes it more reliable, more readable and understandable, a better match for reality, and easier to use by the Web community.

At the same time, the Web Platform Working Group continues to update the Editor's Draft, and proposed a First Public Working Draft of HTML 5.2. This will probably include some new features, some features that were not interoperable –and so not included in HTML 5.1– and some more bug fixes. This will kick off a program of regular Working Draft releases until HTML 5.2 is ready to be moved to W3C Recommendation sometime in the next year or so.

For substantial new features we prefer development first in a separate, “incubator” group, and drafts to only enter the Working Group where there is sufficient support from various kinds of implementers including browsers, authoring tools, producers of content, and users. The Web Platform Incubator Community Group (WICG) was set up for this purpose.

The Web Platform Working Group is determining how to transition work from the incubator group to the working group, as proposals are maturing. Nothing is really imminent but a few are in the pipeline such as payments, directory upload, viewport API, background sync, as well as a few specs of the CSS Houdini (CSS + TAG) task force.

Track progress using Github pulse, or by following on Twitter @HTML_commits or @HTMLWG.

Read more below.

Cohesive Web Platform

In addition to developing HTML, and beyond the build-up of exploring a merger in Publishing on the Web, there is excitement on the way the Web Platform and W3C’s interest is expanding: Web Payments, Web of Things, WebRTC, Web security; all getting traction in W3C, converging to lay a cohesive Web Platform. Recently, we've started looking at possibilities around Blockchain (Blockchains and the Web, a W3C Workshop on Distributed Ledgers on the Web, 29–30 June 2016). Find in the Blockchains Workshop report the many topics for possible standardization or incubation, including various aspects of identity and proof-of-existence, as well as smaller blockchain primitives that could increase interoperability across different distributed ledgers.

Earlier this year the W3C Advisory Committee explored candidate areas for the next big thing for the Web. A straw poll yielded:

1. Security
2. Web Payments and Web of Things were tied
3. HTML and the continuation of OWP
4. WebRTC
5. Industry support
6. Virtual Reality

Security

• Web Authentication Working Group launched and published the FPWD of its WebAuthn API, bringing strong cryptographic authentication to the Web platform (to reduce the reliance on password-based authentication).
• WebAppSec WG published a Recommendation of Subresource Integrity, and Candidate Recommendations of CSP Level 2, Upgrade Insecure Requests and Mixed Content.
• Read more below.

Web Payments

• The Web Payments Working Group is making payments easier and more secure on the Web by maturing three FPWDs:
  • Payment Request API: Web API to allow merchants to easily accept payments from different payment methods with minimal integration. User agents will facilitate the payment flow between merchant and user.
  • Payment Method Identifiers: Payment method identifier strings so that components in the payment ecosystem can determine which parties support which payment methods.
  • Basic Card Payment: Data formats used by the Payment Request API to support payment by payment cards such as credit or debit cards.
• The Web Payments Interest Group continues to look for standardization opportunities for W3C and to hold discussions with other organizations.
  • On its agenda are topics such as: verifiable claims, blockchain (next steps following the Workshop), coupons and loyalty, interledger protocol, and its own mission and operations.
• Read more below.

Web of Things

• Progressing towards overcoming the fragmentation of the Internet of Things; enabling end to end interoperability across different platforms.
• The Web of Things Interest Group is chartering a Working Group.
• Liaisons with the Open Connectivity Foundation, the Industrial Internet Consortium, Industry 4.0, OPC Foundation, ETSI and oneM2M, IETF and IRTF, GSMA, Hypercat, the Open Group, and a number of others.
• Read more below.

WebRTC

• WebRTC milestone: publication last May as Candidate Recommendation of getUserMedia, one of the two main APIs behind the WebRTC technology.
• Once WebRTC 1.0 reaches Candidate Recommendation, work will start in earnest on the next version of WebRTC, which aims at converging in more depth with the work started in the ORTC Community Group.
• Read more below.

Virtual Reality

• The upcoming workshop on Web & Virtual Reality will provide an early perspective on how the two fields can benefit from one another.
• Read more below.

In depth

Digital Publishing

All Standards and Drafts: Digital Publishing

The publishing community is an important community to engage in W3C. Digital publishing is increasingly impacted by the Web. Publishers need to understand how the technology of the Web is evolving. The Web can benefit from the centuries of expertise in the publishing industry on typography and layout, improving the core Web technologies not only for electronic publications but for all Web content.

Currently one W3C group is dedicated to understanding and documenting the particular needs of the publishing community: the Digital Publishing Interest Group.

The Interest Group aims at continuing the work on and around PWP, CSS related issues, as well as Accessibility. Reinforcing the ties with the publishing community at large, in particular with implementers, tool developers, but also with the scholarly publishing community, remains high on the agenda, as well as outreach activities around the relationships between publishing and the development of Web Technologies.

• Ongoing work by the Digital Publishing Interest Group:
  • Several drafts of the “Portable Web Publications for the Open Web Platform” (see also the Editors’ draft), which is giving the overall framework most of the Interest Group’s work. The current work concentrates on a comprehensive Portable Web Publications Use Cases and Requirements. The Interest Group is also busy in the area of Accessibility, working with the ARIA Working Group (Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module 1.0); finally, it has a strong cooperation with the CSS Working Group on various issues related to the needs of the Digital Publishing Community.
  • Digital Publishing and Accessibility in W3C Documents (Interest Group Note).

• Events:
  • The Interest Group held "virtual" face to face meetings on May 25, 2016 and July 7, 2016; a summary of the May meeting is available, as wll as the minutes of the July meeting
  • Members and staff are presenting in various public events, e.g. EPUB Summit, Bordeaux, 7-8 April, and the W3C Track at the WWW2016 Conference, Montréal, Canada, 13 April.
  • There was also a strong presence of the team at the DigiCon conference in Chicago, USA, 10-11 May, as well as the I Annotate Workshop on 19–20 May in Berlin, Germany.

Plans for a closer cooperation between IDPF and W3C

The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) is a global standards organization dedicated to the development and promotion of electronic publishing and digital content consumption. IDPF members include publishers, technology firms, other industry associations, and government and educational organizations. IDPF is the developer of the EPUB standard format for interchange and distribution of digital publications.

As announced to Members and subsequently in home page news and a press release the IDPF leadership and W3C leadership are studying the possibility of merging the work of IDPF into W3C. There is near-total synergy between the technical work of the two organizations. IDPF's work is fully dependent on core Open Web Platform technologies; the EPUB 3 standard is based on HTML, CSS, SVG, and MathML. W3C's Web Accessibility work is fundamental to the design of accessible electronic publications. Technical contributions from the publishing community are helping to improve the capabilities of CSS. Publication packaging technology specified especially for EPUB ought to be based on new OWP technologies in scope for the Web Platform Working Group.

Annotations

All Standards and Drafts: Web Annotation

Web Annotation is a type of UGC content that refers and links to other Web content (deep linking). This may be a comment on an article, a set of captions on an image or video, a footnote in an eBook, a citation in a scholarly paper, an editorial highlight in a copy-edit workflow, or many other types of referential content. Often, web annotations are published and shared elsewhere than the original content, and may be shared on social media, like Twitter or Facebook, with a link back to the original content.

• Ongoing work:
  • The Web Annotation Working Group is focused on the initial steps, providing an interchange model/format that encapsulates these different kinds of UGC content, an API for deep linking into specific parts of primary content, and a protocol for publishing and retrieving annotations across different services.
  • The Group has published three Candidate Recommendations at the beginning of July, namely:
    • Web Annotation Data Model
    • Web Annotation Vocabulary
    • Web Annotation Protocol

• Events:
  • The group had a face-to-face meeting in Berlin, Germany, on the 17-18 May
  • There was also a strong presence of the team at the I Annotate Workshop on 19–20 May in Berlin, Germany (the event was also co-sponsored by W3C)
  • W3C is also represented in the Annotating All Knowledge coalition hosted by Force11.

Automotive

All Standards and Drafts: Automotive

The W3C Automotive Working Group, based on conversations with other groups at TPAC, took a step back and looked at the architecture for its API and accompanying data spec.

• Ongoing work:
  • The previous Working Draft was a WebIDL approach that would require someone to write a browser extension to make a native Vehicle object available to developers and the accompanying data spec was an attempt at trying to define a common core set of signal data that most auto manufacturers could provide. After deliberation, exploring and dismissing Sensor API approach, we considered a RESTful API and Web Sockets service approach. Some of the benefits, in brief, are not needing to maintain browser extensions in step with security upgrades, ability to be more granular in access control for a service as security is a major concern and that the API can be used in the vehicle by other platforms other than a web runtime.
  • This RESTful API can be used by QT In-Vehicle-Infotainment systems and headless applications. The architecture debate concluded at the April F2F. There is industry interest in this new approach. We have also started collaborating on a more ambitious and extensive data spec that can accommodate the differences in data auto manufacturers provide.
  • The group's charter was extended and will be rechartered when we have a better sense of timeline and deliverables. It has made tremendous progress on a new API and data specs.

• Events:
  • July F2F hosted by Jaguar Land Rover.

• Companion Business Group:
  • The W3C Automotive BG acts as an incubator for possible standards work. Its two main focuses are contributing automotive media tuner use cases and requirements to the TV Controller API WG and Location Based Services API, the latter is being led by engineers from Alibaba and Peugeot.

Telecommunications

• All Standards and Drafts: Web Real Time Communication
• All Standards and Drafts:Device and Sensors Working Group

The W3C agenda continues to support important challenges and opportunities that emerge from the telco industry.

• Ongoing work:
  • A first important milestone for the WebRTC work was reached in May, with the publication as a Candidate Recommendation of getUserMedia, one of the two main APIs behind the WebRTC technology
  • Work on bringing the 2nd API (WebRTC 1.0) to CR continues, taking into account the feedback received during the wide review of the existing draft. The Working Group will be meeting at TPAC.

• Upcoming work:
  • Once WebRTC 1.0 reaches Candidate Recommendation, work will start in earnest on the next version of WebRTC, which aims at converging in more depth with the work started in the ORTC Community Group.
  • The upcoming workshop on Web & Virtual Reality will provide an early perspective on how the two fields can benefit from one another, and open the road to new opportunities of network utilization for the bandwidth & latency demanding needs of VR.

• Security tie-in:
  • The Web Authentication Working Group charter was approved, and the Working Group has already published its first public working draft of adapting FIDO-based authentication to browsers. This illustrates another field where the telecommunications industry is bound to benefit from the standardization pushed by W3C to simplify identity management, an important need that operators can both help fulfill and benefit from.
  • While the Hardware Security Working Group draft charter did not receive enough support to proceed as a Working Group, it triggered the creation of an incubation Community Group in this space, the Hardware Based Secure Services CG, which already had its first face-to-face meeting and published its Hardware Based Secure Services preliminary technical analysis and proposal. This work brings the prospects of enabling the high security ensured by hardware-tokens (such as SIM cards) to the Web platform.

• Device perspective:
  • The Device & Sensors Working Group new charter was approved, with work on the generic Sensor API continuing apace, getting ready for its wide review by other groups. It promises to make the Web a more malleable platform when it comes to interaction with physical sensors.
  • Renewed interest on the Network Information API has led to the Web Platform Incubator Community Group restarting work on the spec, with the goal of bringing it back to the Device & Sensors Working Group for finalization when clear implementation plans make it compatible with the requirements from the Recommendation track

• Overlapping work:
  • Many operators also provide media services to their customers; the activity in the Web and TV Interest Group continues to provide new capabilities for Web-based services in this area, as illustrated by the ongoing work on the TV Control API. The work started in the Cloud Browser Task Force which aims at facilitating the deployment of Web-based media services in thin-clients (e.g. set top boxes) is well positioned to provide great cost-saving and better UX to operators.
  • (See Web Payments section) W3C work on Payments and Internet of Things completes the picture of the many places where the telecommunication industry can bring its expertise and its requirements to the future of the Web.

Web Payments

All Standards and Drafts: Web Payments

E-commerce is growing as a proportion of all commerce. According to Forrester, the web in 2018 will account for 11% of total retail sales, up from 8% in 2013. However, a number of challenges are limiting the potential of E-commerce, such as fraud losses, user expectations in particular with mobile device usage, technology (biometrics, Web of Things, automotive advances, and NFC adoption), regulation.

There are numerous discussions currently at W3C around technology intended to improve payments directly or indirectly.

Working and Interest Groups

• Payments:
  • Web Payments Working Group: open APIs to streamline checkout
  • Web Payments Interest Group: use cases and requirements gathering, liaisons
• Security:
  • Web Authentication Working Group
  • WebAppSec
  • WebCrypto

Community Groups

• Payments:
  • Web Payments Community Group: pre-standardization research
• Security:
  • Community Group discussion about Hardware Security (HaSec)
• Clearing and Settlement:
  • Interledger Payments Community Group: easier payments across disparate payment systems
• Verifiable Attributes / Identity:
  • Credentials Community Group

Web Payments Working Group

The mission of the Web Payments Working Group is to make payments easier and more secure on the Web.

• Ongoing work:
  • The WPWG published three FPWDs in April 2016. Those drafts have evolved significantly as the WG resolves issues. We are beginning to see early implementations; see for instance the demo at Google I/O.
  • The WPWG is also working on (but has not yet resolved to request FPWD status):
    • Payment App API, which will describe how users register third-party payment applications, and how browsers launch and communicate payment requests and responses with those applications.
    • A SEPA credit transfer payment method specification.
    • Two specifications regarding HTTP-based payments (e.g., for the Web of Things): Web Payments HTTP API 1.0 and Web Payments HTTP Messages 1.0.

• New Members and events:
  • American Express and Groupement des Cartes Bancaires have joined W3C
  • Blockstream, Tencent, Shopify, Gemalto, and CDT have joined the Web Payments Working Group.
  • Ian Jacobs participated on a panel in the Card Not Present conferience.
  • Canton Consulting organized a gathering in Paris around payments, including representatives from W3C staff as well as the WG and IG.
  • The group held a Face-to-Face meeting 7-8 July in London at Visa Europe.

Web Payments Interest Group

The Web Payments IG continues to look for standardization opportunities for W3C and to hold discussions with other organizations.

• Ongoing work:
  • The Verifiable Claims Task Force (a joint task force with the Credentials Community Group) has had discussions around a draft charter and supporting materials. They are continuing to seek support from W3C Members and non-Members for the work.
  • The IG has had some conversations around loyalty and digital coupons, and how integration might layer on top of the initial work of the Web Payments Working Group.

• Event:
  • The IG held a face-to-face meeting in Boston on 1 July, to discuss verifiable claims, blockchain (next steps following the Workshop), coupons and loyalty, interledger protocol, and its own mission and operations.

Entertainment

All Standards and Drafts: Web and TV

The Web and TV Interest Group serves as steering committee for the TV and Entertainment activity within W3C. Over the years, it contributed to launch a number of Community Groups and Working Groups including the HTML Media Extensions Working Group, the Second Screen Working Group, the TV Control Working Group, and a few other community groups and task forces. On top of the activities mentioned below, note that the group has discussed at TPAC 2015 the possibility to define a Web profile for TV, and may start work in that area by TPAC 2016.

Virtual Reality

A number of industry players have announced important investments or initial products in Virtual Reality. What are the new features and improvements needed to make the Web a compelling platform for actual VR development?

The WebVR Community Group was created in March 2016 to incubate a WebVR API specification, under the impulse of Mozilla.

W3C is organizing a Web & Virtual Reality workshop on 19-20 October 2016 on the West Coast to look at the intersection of Web and Virtual Reality technologies. Topics of interest include: displaying stereoscopic content, detecting & adapting to characteristics of VR headsets, handling new input methods for VR (gamepad, hand position, …), 3D audio, 3D media synchronization, interoperable formats and codecs for 3D and 360 content, bringing VR as progressive enhancement to classic Web browsing, etc.

HTML Media

All Documents: HTML Media Extensions Working Group

The industry and the Consortium choice is to enhance HTML to be capable of playing video content without the help of plug-in video players, streaming technologies over HTTP such as Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) has rapidly emerged in the industry. W3C took to develop two HTML5 extensions to enable UAs to play such streams.

These extensions are essential to meet the industry requirements for video content delivery on the Web, by providing Web apps with more flexible control over video content, which enable advanced services such as dynamic ad-insertion.

HTML Media, core media features of Web platform, is developed in the HTML Media Extensions Working Group. It is working on providing control over playback of encrypted content.

Ongoing work:

• The HTML Media Extensions Working Group is currently working on two extensions: Media Source Extensions (MSE) and Encrypted Media Extensions (EME).
  • MSE is a Candidate Recommendation that allows JavaScript to send byte streams to media codecs within Web browsers that support HTML5 video. It facilitates a variety of use cases like adaptive streaming and time shifting live streams (MSE Github page).
  • EME is a Candidate Recommendation for providing a communication channel between Web browsers and content protection systems to allow playback of encrypted audio and video on the Web. This allows the use of HTML5 video to play back DRM-wrapped content such as streaming video services without the need for third-party media plugins like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. (EME on Github)
• version 1.0 of the two extensions are planned to become W3C Recommendations on September 29th, as specified by the Group timeline.
• There are some industry requests for additional features and participants are eager to start the work on them. TPAC 2016 will be an important milestone for the future work.

Cloud Browser

The Cloud Browser TF, subset of the Web and TV Interest Group, discusses support for web browser technology within devices such as HDMI dongles and lightweight STBs.

New cloud browser Runtime Environments (RTEs) require the definition of APIs that would enable communication between the cloud browser and the client.

• Ongoing work:
  • The TF develops an Architecture document to help identify technical gaps
  • The TF discusses use cases and requirements

GGIE (Glass-to-Glass Internet Ecosystem)

Thanks to the international and interdependent standards developed by global organizations including W3C, IETF, IEEE, CEA, SMPTE, MPEG, etc. the Internet-based or Web-based video content delivery services are expanding in the entertainment content market. Because of the distributed and sometime ad-hoc nature of the efforts, there is a need to go back to use cases: capture existing use cases, analyze them, and enhance them to further develop new standards for better services.

The GGIF TF, subset of the Web and TV Interest Group, discusses the end to end Internet digital video ecosystem, focusing on all phases of the video life cycle: Capture-Edit-Package-Distribute-Find-Watch for both professional and non-professional digital video, and will identify recommended standards and features that could be developed.

• Ongoing work:
  • The TF elaborates key components of a flexible content identification mechanism, and writes down GGIE Use Cases and requirement docs which could be used to begin new technical works. The second round is expected to finish at TPAC 2016.

Second Screen

All Documents: Second Screen Presentation Working Group

Web content is available on an ever expanding array of devices including eBook readers, phones, tablets, laptops, auto displays, and electronic billboards, and there are a variety of mechanisms that allow these devices to use secondary display screens available in the local environment, attached by wired connections or remotely with wireless, peer-to-peer media. However, in most cases, lower layers such as OS provide those connection mechanisms, which Web apps, consequently, have no access and control over. Web apps should be capable of implementing services which cover scenarios such as using a big screen device to watch a movie selected on and streamed from a smartphone are getting more common as OTT services like Netflix emerge.

The Second Screen Working Group aims at defining simple APIs that allow web applications to show and control web content on one or more secondary displays.

• Ongoing work:
  • Presentation API published as Candidate Recommendation mid-July 2016.
  • Making progress on the Remote Playback API that allows controlling remote playback of media from a web page. The group published the First Public Working Draft mid-July 2016.
  • The group is actively working on a test suite for the Presentation API.

• Upcoming::
  • WG participants discussed the possibility to develop an open protocol for the Presentation API within the Second Screen Community Group, so as to allow a device to connect to another vendor's device. A new charter for the CG is being finalized accordingly. Expectation is to move this work to a WG, the IETF, or some other organization once sufficiently incubated.
  • The Working Group will re-charter by end of October 2016 to finalize the Presentation API and the Remote Playback API. Scope may not change as discussions within the CG will likely not have made enough progress by then. We encourage interested parties to share their thoughts with their favorite point of contact in the team.

TV Control API

The TV Control Working Group was launched in May 2016 to develop an API that would allow Web apps to access radio/TV tuners and other broadcasting resources. The WG takes of the work done by the TV Control API Community Group since 2014.

• Ongoing work:
  • The TV Control API Specification should be published as FPWD by TPAC.
  • The Auto BG is providing the TV Control API CG use cases for automotive Media Tuner needs.

Multi-device Timing

In 2015, The Web and TV IG launched the Multi-device Timing Community Group to create a draft specification that defines a common, multi-device, timing mechanism and a practical programming model e.g. to allow Web apps to synchronize the playback of multiple streams on multiple devices. Timing mechanisms allow operations to be executed at the correct time. On the Web, different specs use different synchronization mechanisms, and there is no support for multi-device timing.

• Ongoing work:
  • Initial draft of the Timing Object specification, along with a reference polyfill implementation in JavaScript.

• Upcoming::
  • The group needs involvement from would-be implementers. Contributions to the discussions would be particularly welcome!
  • The CG meeting at TPAC 2016 on Tuesday afternoon.
  • Multi-device timing is important for the broadcasting industry, as well as for digital signage, and audio use cases.
  • Such a mechanism could also improve the accessibility of media content on the Web. For example, third party can easily provide additional audio track, such as Clean Audio.
  • More generally, multi-device timing has wide utility in communication, collaboration and multi-screen presentation.

Application development

HTML

All Documents: Web Platform Working Group

Progress are being made to ensuring that HTML is truly part of the extensible Web, to enable feature development and iteration through the use of HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Track for HTML 5.1 REC

The Web Platform Working Group is on track to deliver a Recommendation for HTML 5.1 (HTML on GitHub) this year, with a working approach that will make it possible to deliver a further improved HTML Recommendation (HTML 5.2) in another year. The Group closed more issues than it opened, and now has a working rhythm for the specification that is getting up to the speed it wants. There are a few features marked “at risk”, which means they will be removed from HTML5.1 if the Group find during the Candidate Recommendation that they do not work in at least two shipping browsers. The Web Platform WG hopes that HTML5.1 is better than HTML5, and that it would benefit the web community if we updated the “gold standard”. The work on HTML 5.2 already started and includes features such as module scripts.

Extensible Web & (real) Web Applications

The work on Web components (Custom Elements, Shadow DOM) is progressing and getting broader deployment in implementations. This brings us closer to a reality when developers will be able to provide their own custom HTML elements, as components.

We are also ensuring that Web applications are able to be behave like real applications and be more reliable. The Core of this work happens around the Service Workers effort, to enable offline support, application lifecycles (such as install, update), and background tasks (offline notification). This allows the application to install properly and ensure from the start that the needed resources are available offline. The first version of Service Workers is expected to reach Candidate Recommendation in late September.

Other ongoing work

The Web Platform Working Group is also producing several specifications (Status) that enable improved client-side application development on the Web, including application programming interfaces (APIs) for client-side development and markup vocabularies for describing and controlling client-side application behavior.

• ARIA in HTML defines the web developer rules (author conformance requirements) for the use of ARIA attributes on HTML elements. The first version will support ARIA 1.1 and HTML 5.1, following the same timeline as ARIA 1.1.
• Web App Manifest defines a JSON-based manifest file that provides developers with a centralized place to put metadata associated with a web application. This metadata includes, but is not limited to, the web application's name, links to icons, as well as the preferred URL to open when a user launches the web application.
• Web IDL defines an interface definition language that can be used to describe interfaces that are intended to be implemented in web browsers. The first version is expected to become a W3C Recommendation in September 2016.

CSS

All Documents: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group

The CSS Working Group is continuing its refinement and progress of the CSS language. The group recently moved both test suite maintenance and specification bugtracking to GitHub issues, which is expected to encourage wider participation.

Timed Text

All Documents: Timed Text Working Group

Since the late 90s, the Consortium identified the need for proper online media captioning. The Timed Text Working Group is developing and maintaining formats used for the representation of text synchronized with other timed media, like audio and video. This work, begun in WAI, enables online captioning, which is critically important to ensure accessibility of TV and video on the web for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. In recent years with the convergence of traditional media and the Web, more video content from television is coming to the Web, and the Web is now running on televisions. TTML helps to bridge these worlds.

Ongoing work:

• The Timed Text Markup Language (TTML) 2 specification (TTML2 on GitHub) defines a timed text media format for the purpose of interchange among authoring systems. It is intended to be used for the purpose of transcoding or exchanging timed text information among legacy distribution content formats presently in use for subtitling and captioning functions. In January 2016, W3C received an Emmy® Award for Standards Work on Accessible Video Captioning and Subtitles for its work on the TTML 1.0 W3C Recommendation; read the press release.
• the Web Video Text Tracks format (WebVTT) (WebVTT on GitHub) provide captions or subtitles for video content, and also text video descriptions [MAUR], chapters for content navigation, and more generally any form of metadata that is time-aligned with audio or video content. Its main use is for marking up external text track resources in connection with the HTML <track> element.
• The TTML Profiles for Internet Media Subtitles and Captions (IMSC) specifications define two profiles of TTML: a text-only profile and an image-only profile. These profiles are intended to be used across subtitle and caption delivery applications worldwide, thereby simplifying interoperability, consistent rendering and conversion to other subtitling and captioning formats. IMSC1 became a recommendation in May 2016; read the press release.
• The Group started the work on IMSC 2 (IMSC on GitHub).
• The Group also published the TTML Media Type Definition and Profile Registry, which defines the application/xml+ttml media type and provides a registry of identified TTML processor profiles.

Performance

All Documents: Web Performance Working Group

Everyone would agree that it's better to have a Web that is fast rather than slow. In the Web Performance Working Group, we work on methods to observe and improve aspects of application performance of user agent features and APIs. We expect to publish the first version of the Resource Timing specification by September 2016 (Resource Timing on GitHub). It captures the end to end latency associated with loading resources from a web server.

Work has also been ongoing on defining primitives that enable the developer, and the server generating or delivering the resources, to assist the user agent in the decision process of which origins it should connect to, and which resources it should fetch and pre-process to improve page performance (Resource Hints on GitHub).

Testing

Perhaps the biggest news about our Testing effort is that there is a plan to soon merge the CSS test suite into our core Web Platform Tests test suite.

With that merge, here are some current data points about the Web Platform Tests test suite:

• contains tests for more than 130 specs (more than 80 API specs and more than 50 CSS specs)
• contains more than 18,000 test cases (more than 7000 API test cases, and more than 11,000 CSS test cases)
• produces more than 300,000 test results in total for each browser engine it is run against

Note that we have in practice basically retired the Test the Web Forward brand that had been associated with our testing effort in the past and helped get some momentum going behind it in earlier years. While the testthewebforward.org/ website continues to exist for now, it may eventually be mothballed (which would amount in the near term to having it just become a redirect either to web-platform-tests or to a new URL under just the Web Platform Tests brand).

General background on the Web Platform Tests test suite

Our testing effort centers on creating a set of test cases, Web Platform Tests, with coverage for every standard feature of the Web runtime, for these purposes:

• to ensure interoperability of the Web runtime among all four major browser engines currently in use: Apple’s WebKit, Google’s Blink, Microsoft’s EdgeHTML, and Mozilla’s Gecko;
• to facilitate new browser-engine projects (such as Mozilla Servo) in development and testing of their engines and interoperability with currently-used engines.

Interoperability of standard features of the Web runtime across all browser engines ensures that Web developers can create Web content using those standard features without needing to write multiple code paths or hacks to work around browser differences.

The features tested by the Web Platform Tests test suite include both standard Web runtime APIs that are available to Web developers to use in their JavaScript code to control behavior of their Web applications, as well as CSS features that Web developers can use in their CSS stylesheets to control the presentational look-and-feel of their Web applications and Web documents [once the CSS test suite has actually been merged into the Web Platform Tests test suite, which should happen later this summer].

Privacy and Security

All Standards and Drafts: Security for Web Applications

The fundamental line of trust on the Web is between the end-user and the Web application: individuals who visit a website rely on HTTPS to trust that they are getting the page or application put there by the site owner. Features of Web Application Security are designed to support that trust, protecting against cross-site scripting and content-injection attacks or unwanted snooping on Web traffic. If a Web application includes resources from third parties, however, it may effectively delegate its trust to all of those included resources, any of which could maliciously or carelessly compromise the overall security of the Web application and data shared with it.

• Web Authentication Working Group launched and published the FPWD of its WebAuthn API, bringing strong cryptographic authentication to the Web platform (to reduce the reliance on password-based authentication).
• WebAppSec WG continued its work to improve the security available to web application developers and users and easing the HTTPS transition. The WG published a Recommendation of Subresource Integrity, and Candidate Recommendations of CSP Level 2, Upgrade Insecure Requests and Mixed Content,

Subresource Integrity (SRI), which just reached W3C Recommendation status, offers a way to include resources without that open-ended delegation. It lets browsers, as user-agents, cryptographically verify that the integrity of included subresources such as scripts and styles, matches as-delivered what was expected by the requesting application.

Web of Things

There are huge business and societal opportunities for the Internet of Things (IoT), but this is being held back by fragmentation with a confusing set of non-interoperable platforms, standards and technologies. Without care any new standards would just add to the fragmentation.

The key to overcoming the fragmentation of the IoT and catalyzing exponential growth in services will be enabling end to end interoperability across different platforms. This requires open standards for metadata that defines the data and interaction models exposed to applications, the protocols and communication patterns that can be used, the security and privacy policies, and descriptions of the kinds of things that are involved and the relationships between them. In short, to enable a Web of Things, and to expand the Web from a web of pages to a web of things.

The Web of Things Interest Group is preparing the way with work on use cases, and requirements, technology landscape studies, and emphasis on implementation experience.

Things have URIs for their names, which can be de-referenced to access metadata describing a thing. The formal basis for this metadata is W3C's resource description framework (RDF), but the syntax can vary according to the context, e.g. JSON, XML, and other formats. By analogy with the cross platform API for Internet sockets, we see a need for a cross platform API for things. This builds upon the success of event driven programming by treating things in terms of their properties, actions and events.

• Ongoing work:
  • We’re looking for help with defining standard vocabularies, APIs and protocol bindings, security, privacy and resilience, along with enablers for dynamic open markets of services including discovery, automated negotiation of prices, terms and conditions, provisioning, payments and support throughout the product lifecycle from design to obsolescence.

• Upcoming challenges:
  • How to foster convergence on a common set of models for things, e.g. in smart homes. Proposals for these could be a big help with this goal.
  • A related challenge is how to support an agile process for standardizing models, with a clear progression for increasing maturity from experimental, to commercially deployed, to massively deployed. Here, we are thinking of lightweight semantics with a easy way for people to browse for vocabularies (to encourage re-use), to register their support, link to implementations and so forth.

• Upcoming::
  • The IG is chartering a Working Group.
  • We are reaching out to industry alliances and standards development organizations with a view to establishing a shared understanding and clarifying the complementary role that W3C is seeking to play in collaboration with these organizations. Some of the these include the Open Connectivity Foundation, the Industrial Internet Consortium, Industry 4.0, OPC Foundation, ETSI and oneM2M, IETF and IRTF, GSMA, Hypercat, the Open Group, and a number of others. By collaborating on building a common understanding of these aims, we can build bridges across these different communities to facilitate work on gathering key use cases across a broad range of domains, identifying and analysing the requirements, creating the missing standards and promoting best practices.

Blockchains

Many projects and companies are looking at ways to use the Bitcoin blockchain or other public or private distributed ledgers, to record an immutable time-stamped public record that can be independently verified by any stakeholder.

It's unclear how these blockchains will need to interact with each other in the future to prove its benefits. But there’s consensus that some standards are needed to promote competition while eliminating redundancies. W3C held on 29–30 June 2016 Blockchains and the Web, a W3C Workshop on Distributed Ledgers on the Web.

High-level take away from the workshop:

• Most participants were interested in developing standard APIs and primitive data formats to allow both new and legacy applications to have consistent approaches to communicating with blockchains.
• Driven by business needs, the first objectives in this area included key management and payment protocols, and most are layers above blockchain that use cryptographic approaches.
• Hardware authentication was another area of significant interest.
• Transacting with a public/private key pair over a blockchain is more convenient and secure than today’s username/password identity schemes.
• Provenance: licensing of IP, assets, and services
• Impact on non-financial blockchain applications (on content creators, on digital assets, as coordinator of a user-centric environment for the Internet of Things).

Next steps:

• Organizing a follow-up workshop more focused on the browser vendors.
• Several W3C Community Groups created.
• The earliest Blockchain Community Group will continue to expand its scope and keep the conversation going

Web of Data

More and more Web applications provide a means of accessing data. From simple visualizations to sophisticated interactive tools, there is a growing reliance on the availability of data which can be “big” or “small”, of diverse origin, and in different formats; it is usually published without prior coordination with other publishers — let alone with precise modeling or common vocabularies. This diversity is overcome by providing standard data exchange formats, models, tools, and guidance, which facilitates Web-scale data integration and processing.

Data and its usage should be discoverable and understandable by humans and machines. To facilitate interaction between publishers and consumers of Data, the Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group published a Candidate Recommendation of Data on the Web Best Practices.  The DWBP WG is actively soliciting implementations from the community.

The closely related Share-PSI project, co-funded by the European Commission, has concluded its work recently with the publication of a set of high level policy-related Best Practices and guides for the sharing of public sector information online. Although targeted at Europe, the advice, which is available in many languages and contexts, is likely to be applicable world wide.

W3C launched in February the Permissions and Obligations Expression WG to create recommendations for expressing permissions and obligations statements for digital content. Leveraging the work incubated in the ODRL W3C Community Group, the group has released Use-Cases and Requirements and is working on the ODRL Information Model and ODRL Vocabulary & Expression.

Workshop: Smart Descriptions & Smarter Vocabularies (SDSVoc)

W3C will hold Smart Descriptions & Smarter Vocabularies (SDSVoc) Workshop, 30 November – 1 December 2016, in Amsterdam, hosted by CWI and organized in conjunction with the EU funded project VRE4EIC.

This workshop aims to clarify the steps needed to improve communication between data repositories and applications that use that data, such as virtual research environments. Applications may simply discover data or visualize it, manipulate it, discuss it, correct it, describe it, republish it, etc. The outcome may be a new W3C Working Group chartered to extend DCAT and determine how human and machine-readable metadata profiles are defined and made discoverable. A further aim is to explore how W3C can best support vocabulary development for a variety of communities.

Web for All

Internationalization (i18n)

All Standards and Drafts: Internationalization

Fewer than one third of current Web users speak English as their native language and that proportion will continue to decrease as the Web reaches more and more communities of limited English proficiency. If the Web is to live up to the "World Wide" portion of its name, it must support the needs of world-wide users at a basic level as they engage with content in the various languages.

The W3C Internationalization activities pursue this goal in various ways, including reviews, discussion and advice for Working Groups at the W3C, coordination with other organizations, creation of educational materials, gathering user requirements, and technical work itself on various topics. In this period the Internationalization Working Group, Internationalization Interest Group and Internationalization Tag Set Interest Group had their charter renewed.

Ongoing work for WG support

• As usual, the i18n WG reviewed and discussed comments related to specifications of a number of Working Groups. In particular, during this period, the i18n Working Group has been working with WGs such as HTML, Web Annotations, Data on the Web Best Practices, and Digital Publishing. A list of ongoing discussions is available in our issue tracker, and our review radar lists upcoming reviews.
• Work is also ongoing in support of the Encoding specification. We have been tracking developments in the editor's version and producing up to date results for a large number of tests that were developed during the Candidate Recommendation stage.
• Progress has also been made in documenting best practices for Working Groups, so that they can proactively build good practice into their specifications from an early stage. Work continues on [Internationalization Best Practices for Spec Developers] (and its derived checklist Internationalization Techniques: Developing specifications), and on Character Model for the World Wide Web: String Matching and Searching.

Ongoing work in education & outreach

• The start of 2016 saw a major effort to update our educational materials, including the task-based help at Internationalization techniques: Authoring HTML & CSS and around 70 articles and tutorials listed there and in the index of articles.
• Changes were made to improve readability and to reflect recent developments in technology, particularly in HTML and CSS. Many articles were substantially rewritten, including What is ruby?, Bidi space loss, Who uses Unicode?, Setting language preferences in a browser, How to use Unicode controls for bidi text, Unicode controls vs. markup for bidi support, CSS vs. markup for bidi support, Character encodings for beginners, Changing an HTML page to Unicode, and a number were removed.
• We have also developed new articles on how to use ruby markup, how to use vertical text in CSS, guiding users to translated pages, and essential terms for working with time zones.
• Additionally, work is under way to rewrite the Working Group Note, Unicode in XML.
• In other areas, content was provided about things such as character encodings and language attributes for the new EdX course for HTML beginners, and support for internationalization topics was provided in the fora for that and the intermediate course.
• Also the Internationalization Working Group was represented at the Unicode workshop in Oman in February, with the anchor tutorial on the first day and a further tutorial about Bidi support on the Web.

Ongoing work in requirements development

Groups associated with the Internationalization Activity are also involved in documenting requirements for support of non-Latin scripts. These include Arabic, Ethiopic, Indic, Chinese and Mongolian. See a list of current activity.

Ongoing work for Multilingual Web

• The liaison with the OASIS committee XLIFF OMOS continued. The TC presented a first version of the object model in June 2016 at the Localization World conference FEISGILTT workshop. We will bring this object model to relevant W3C groups to assure its compatibility with Web technologies, were adequate.
• We continued again in liaison with OASIS the work on have the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0 specification available natively in XLIFF. This work will be documented in XLIFF 2.1, so that XLIFF tools conformant to the related XLIFF 2.1 module will understand ITS natively. The timeline for this work was planned to be Q1-Q2 2016 but is likely to be delayed until Q4 2017.
• The discussions at conferences about the usage of ITS 2.0 & linked data in XLIFF and other XML formats led to the creation of a new community group RAX - RDF and XML Interoperability. A topic which seems to be of relevance beyond the I18N community.
• Work on linguistic linked data continued in various community groups. The OntoLex community group has published the report OntoLex Lexicon Model for Ontologies. The OntoLex model provides a machine readable way to represent language specific lexica on the Web and link them general knowledge sources.
• Outreach fostering the adoption of ITS 2.0 and the linguistic linked data technologies continued with the support of the EU FREME project, including the development of open source implementations.
• ITS 2.0 and its joined application with other technologies, esp. Web annotation and the OntoLex model, were presented at various academic and industry conferences: XML Prague 2016, LREC 2016, the Localization World workshop FEISGILTT 2016.

• Events:
  • Further activities are planned for the Frankfurt book fair in September and the TCWorld conference in November.

• Heads up to W3C Members:
  • The Internationalization Working Group is looking for additional participants, especially but not limited to those who can help with reviewing W3C and Unicode specifications.
  • The various layout requirements task forces are also looking for additional participation from experts in typography for non-Latin scripts.
  • Extensive lobbying is being undertaken in the EU to assure further, long-term funding opportunities for I18N related work. The main target is the Big Data Value Association which encompasses the topics of language and data related standardization. A dedicated task force on standardization has been created, co-led by Felix Sasaki.

Web accessibility

All Standards and Drafts: Accessibility; see also WAI Resources.

Advanced guidance on Web accessibility

• The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group has re-evaluated how to integrate new guidance, and is exploring how to fold it into a WCAG 2.1.
• This includes guidance in the areas of mobile accessibility; accessibility for people with cognitive and learning disabilities; and accessibility for people with low vision, (see draft Accessibility Requirements for People with Low Vision).
• WCAG 2.0 remains the stable and widely referenced standard for making the Web accessible for people with disabilities and older users. The WCAG WG has published updated versions of Techniques for WCAG 2.0 and Understanding WCAG 2.0.
• Work on Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) proposal that has been incubating in the Automated WCAG Monitoring Community Group (Auto-WCAG CG) is currently under review by the WCAG WG, to be pursued in a proposed WCAG Task Force. See also ACT Deliverables.

Accessibility Reviews of W3C Specifications

• The Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group (APA WG) took up the Protocols and Formats Working Group's (PFWG) previous work doing "horizontal reviews" of W3C specifications under development. APA WG accessibility reviews help other W3C working groups identify and address potential accessibility barriers, and potential opportunities for accessibility innovations. APA typically reviews and provides comments on 25 or more draft specifications per year, thus helping support W3C's Web for All mission.
• The APA WG has launched the Research Questions Task Force (RQTF), to capture research needs identified during APA WG accessibility reviews of W3C specifications, as well as from other WAI working groups. See how to join RQTF.

Development of ARIA 1.1 and preparation for ARIA 2.0

• The Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) WG took over the specification development responsibilities of the previous PFWG. Since the March 2016 W3C AC meeting, the ARIA WG has been developing a pre-Candidate Recommendation version of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) 1.1, which among other things replaces the aria-describedAt property with an aria-details property. The ARIA WG may defer some ARIA 1.1 issues to ARIA 2.0, which they will soon start collecting requirements for.
• The ARIA WG has coordinated with the Digital Publishing Interest Group on Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.1 and Digital Publishing Accessibility API Mappings, and is coordinating with the SVG WG through the SVG Accessibility Task Force on SVG Accessibility API Mappings.

Easier On-ramps to accessibility, now including videos

• Just before 2016 Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), WAI's Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) announced ten "perspectives" videos. These brief videos provide a conceptual introduction to Web accessibility and are one of the resources that EOWG has developed to address requests for "easier on-ramps" for accessibility.
• The Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) has published an easier-to-use interface for "How to Meet WCAG 2.0".
• EOWG updated the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List, which now lists 76 accessibility evaluation tools, and the Web Accessibility Evaluation Report Generator.
• EOWG is developing a Accessibility UI Components List of frameworks, widgets, components for a better Web, and will resume work on WAI Tutorials and a responsive design update of the Before and After Demo.

WAI continues to monitor uptake of accessibility guidelines by a variety of organizations around the world, and to promote harmonization of accessibility standards in order to leverage the efficiency of using a common web accessibility standard worldwide, including re-usable testing and training resources.

W3C in the World

Training

• Over 300K people enrolled in the W3Cx HTML5 courses (HTML5 Intro, HTML5 Part 1 and HTML5 Part 2).
• Excellent feedback from the students both wrt the quality of the course content but also the fact that it comes from W3C.
• HTML5 Part 1 (our 1st MOOC!) is listed as the 4th most popular course on edX
• HTML5 Intro has been developed in partnership with Intel
• CSS Introduction course, in partnership with Microsoft Corporation, has been launched early September. To start 7 November 2016, this course will invite the enrolled students to participate in the 25th CSS anniversary celebration (17 December 2016).
• Upcoming: "JavaScript Introduction" course, in partnership with University Côte d'Azur [Feb-March 2017]

Liaisons

W3C is involved in liaisons and coordination with numerous organizations and SDOs to:

• coordinate our respective agenda;
• avoid duplication of work;
• mitigate different milestones timing, different confidentiality rules, different IPR, different vision of the Web;
• make sure standards are interoperable;
• ensure the global set of Web and Internet standards form a compatible stack of technologies, at the technical and policy level (patent regime, fragmentation, use in policy making);
• promote Standards adoption equally by the industry, the public sector, and the public at large.

Regular activities

• At the government liaison level, we ensure our standards work is officially recognized so that products based on them (often done by our members) are part of procurement orders.
• We have ARO/PAS status with ISO; WAI WCAG 2 became ISO/IEC 40500; MathML became ISO/IEC 40314 (for Pi).
• W3C is a co-signatory of OpenStand. IEEE, IETF and W3C, pilars of Internet/Web standards, joined to create a new paradigm for standards.
• In Internet Governance, W3C participates in ICANN, GIPO, IGF, the I*, etc.
• W3C gave ICANN input on the New gTLD Auction Proceeds Discussion Paper.

Ongoing and upcoming work

• We are currently working with ISO/JTC 1 on potential changes to the copyright regime of our PAS submissions.
• We are participating in the EU MSP and Rolling Plan on Standardization.
• We are tracking incoming and outgoing official liaisons in a Member-visible archive.

Organizational evolution: internal functional reorganization

In order to better support the W3C Membership in creating new Recommendations, the W3C Team will operate, starting September 26, 2016, under an organization model that better accords with the nature of today's Web and the expectations of its diverse users, developers, and implementers. The new functional structure affects neither the role of the Director, nor how W3C creates new Recommendations, nor the W3C Process. The role of Team Contacts won't change, and one purpose of the re-org is to help them do their jobs better. We expect transition time to be as smooth and transparent as possible.

Indeed, to lead the Web to its full potential today requires a flexible team organized to interact with a complex ecosystem of technologies, stakeholders, and industries. It requires well-researched strategy development, rigorous project management, and careful architectural coordination. The reorganization sustains and improves the existing unique strengths of W3C as a standards organization but places more focus on agile strategy development, excellence in execution, and coherence of the Web architecture.

Some of the improvements this new structure will achieve and the new leadership roles assigned are described in-depth in 2016 W3C Internal Reorganization.

Strategy Management

Lead: Wendy Seltzer.

To be on top of the complex and fast-evolving Web, Strategy Management has primary responsibility to ensure that we are working on the correct topics, get started in new areas, and prioritize resources to where they are needed.

Project Management

Lead: Philippe Le Hégaret.

To move again at Web-speed and to meet the platform where it will be, Project Management has primary responsibility to ensure that we deliver the specifications that are needed in a timely fashion, supporting and driving groups, chairs and editors to success.

Architecture & Technology Management

Lead: Ralph Swick (also continuing as COO).

To directly support the Director, advise on and drive cohesive technical design, coordinate horizontal review, Architecture & Technology Management ensures that the collection of specifications works well together to provide an overall architecture for the web. Success in identifying and completing topics increasingly depends on strengthening our relationships with our Members. These relationships enable us to understand Member needs and gain their full participation.

Industry Management

Lead: Philipp Hoschka.

To reinforce visions, identify new requirements for groups and new products with Strategy Management, Industry Management focuses on Industry needs, engages and liaises with the standards organizations of those industries.

Global Participation Management

Lead: Angel Li (also continuing as Beihang Site Manager).

Global Participation Management focuses on the essential task of increasing excellent Member activity in our groups and overcoming language, culture and time zone issues.

Member Satisfaction Management

Lead: Veronica Thom (also continuing as CFO).

Member Satisfaction Management ensures that Members are satisfied with W3C and have channels to recommend improvement.

Community Management

Lead: Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (also continuing as Web and Mobile Devices Lead).

Community Management ensures that we are working with key developers both inside and outside of our Membership.

Specialists and other support

Various Leads will be assisted by specialists who, in the case of strategy and Architecture & Technology, restore some of the technical area focus previously provided by the Domains.

Business Development is reshaped slightly to maximize and bring in new revenue.

The Web Accessibility Initiative is a long-time publicly visible brand of W3C, and will be kept as a brand and as an Initiative, led by the WAI Director. As reflected in the WAI Sponsorship description, the Initiative ensures a cohesive package of accessibility work to enable partnering of multiple stakeholder groups within the W3C structure, to address coordinated aspects of technical, educational, and standards harmonization work. However, whereas in the past the work was mostly managed by a single Domain, accessibility work is now distributed across the new functions (primarily Strategy, Project and Architecture & Technology) supported by the WAI specialists and WAI Director, in order to leverage broader commitment to accessibility throughout the organization.

Unchanged from today are Administration and Operations, Marketing & Communications, Systems, Legal.

Conclusion

This is a time of change for the Web. W3C is responding with great changes. The Web community is growing, innovative, agile

Growing Community: As the Publishing community is growing, 'Web = Publishing' is becoming truer and truer, including joint efforts with IDPF to foster the (r)evolution of ebooks and a richer reading and learning experience. The digital economy is growing as well. We continue to give particular attention to the Web of Things and creating the platform that drives more connectivity needs, and enabling the IoT interoperability. Platform cohesion being crucial, Web Security, Internationalization, Web Accessibility remain key components as we expand towards the robust Open Web Platform our civilization is eager for.

Innovative Community: As W3C continues to move forward with Web Payments, Web Real-Time Communications, automotive, Web Security, etc., it explores for standardization opportunities innovative areas like Blockchains and Virtual Reality.

Agile Community: The W3C Team, under the impulsion of the W3C Advisory Board, continues to regularly update and improve its Process Document. Process 2016 will soon be balloted for adoption while the public Revising the W3C Process Community Group is already considering changes for Process 2017. Every once in a great while, the W3C Team undergoes an internal reorganization. In order to better support the W3C Membership in creating new Recommendations and keep up with the nature of today's Web, now is the time to become a fully flexible team organized to interact with technologies, stakeholders, and industries, to harness strategy development, rigorous project management, and careful architectural coordination.