W3C Strategic Highlights: Outreach to the world (W3C Liaisons)

(This post is part of a series recapping the October 2018 W3C Strategic Highlights and does not include significant updates since that report.)

W3C Liaisons

Liaisons and coordination with numerous organizations and SDOs is crucial for W3C to:

• avoid duplication of work;
• mitigate different milestones timing, different confidentiality rules, different IPR, different vision of the Web;
• make sure standards are interoperable;
• coordinate our respective agenda in Internet governance, W3C participates in ICANN, GIPO, IGF, the I*. Notably, W3C participates in the ICANN Technical Experts Group and also in the New gTLD Auction benefits ICANN WG;
• ensure at the government liaison level that our standards work is officially recognized so that products based on them (often done by our members) are part of procurement orders. W3C has ARO/PAS status with ISO. W3C participates in the EU MSP and Rolling Plan on Standardization;
• 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 --W3C is a co-signatory of OpenStand. IEEE, IETF and W3C, pillars of Internet/Web standards, joined to create a new paradigm for standards.

The three de-jure European Standards Organizations, CEN, CENELEC, and ETSI have adopted W3C "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)  2.1" in the recently updated version of EN 301 549 “Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services”. W3C staff involvement fosters continued harmonization of formal and informal European standards with the international technical guidance from W3C.