W3C Was established in 1994 To develop common protocols for the web, promote its evolution, and improve interoperability. Motto:

What is the W3C?

Two Views:

• The W3C View

• The cynical view

"lead the Web to its full potential” AND ……… ensure that the web remains a robust,

scalable, and adaptive infrastructure; make the web accessible to as many users

as possible; promote technologies that bridge

differences in culture, education, ability, material resources, and physical limitations.

An international industry consortium jointly hosted

by institutions in

the US

Europe

Asia

(MIT)

(INRIA)

(Keio University, Japan)

424 members (as of June 23):

commercial companies

academic institutions

consortiums

government agencies

commercial companies:

hardware, software, and telecommunications companies; content providers; and corporate users.

Adobe Systems Inc. America Online, Inc. American Express Andromedia Apple Computer, Inc. AT&T Autodesk, Inc. Baltimore Technologies The Boeing Company University of Bologna University of Bristol Bull S.A. Cardiff Software CERN Cisco Systems CiTEC CITIBANK, N.A.

CNRS Coalition for Networked Information Compaq Computer Corporation Concur Technologies Corel Corporation Data Channel Data Research Associates, Inc. Eastman Kodak Company Federal Geographic Data Committee France Telecom Fretwell-Downing Fulcrum Technologies, Inc. GE Information Services, Inc. George Washington University Graphic Communications

Association The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hewlett Packard Company HiT Software Hitachi, Ltd. HitchHiker Software GmbH Honda Motor Co., Ltd Hong Kong Jockey Club HTML Writers Guild, Inc. IBM Corporation IBM Taiwan Corporation IEEE Computer Society Intel Corporation DOI Foundation Japan Broadcasting

Corporation Keio University Library of Congress

Lotus Lucent Technologies MIT Merrill Lynch Metropolitan Police Service Microsoft Corporation Microstar Software Ltd. Microsystems Software, Inc. MindQuake Interactive, Inc. MITRE Corporation Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Motorola NASA Ames Research Center NSA National Univ of Singapore

NBC Internet NCR NEC Corporation Network Solutions University of New South Wales Nokia OCLC Open Text Corporation SilverPlatter Information Inc. Stack Overflow AG Sun Microsystems, Inc. EPA Web3D Consortium webMethods, Inc. WinStar Xerox Corporation ZOT Group

Membership

$50,000. (full) $5,000. (affiliate)

• government agencies• non-profit• limited revenue

(no difference in privileges)

Services and Products

Primary service:

• a vendor neutral forum

Primary product:

• “Recommendations”

Stages of a Recomendation

Working Draft• in development (42)• last call (15)

Candidate Recommendation (3) Proposed Recommendation (1) Recommendation (22)

Organizational Elements

Staff. About 60. The “Team”

Advisory Committee/Board

Working Groups

“Domains”

User Interface

Technology and Society

Architecture

Web Accessibility Initiative

User Interface Premise

• As web information continues to grow, both in volume and variety, it will be used by a greater diversity of people, and simplicity and interoperability will take on even greater importance.

Focus• formats/languages that will present information to users

with more accuracy and a higher level of control

User Interface Domain:

Activities HTML Style sheets Graphics Internationalization (character sets) Document Object Model Mobile Access Synchronized Multimedia Voice Browsers

“Domains”

User Interface

Technology and Society

Architecture

Web Accessibility Initiative

Technology and Society “trying to understand the social impact of the

web” ……..

Looks at Ethical and Legal issues…...• electronic commerce • privacy

…… “from an international perspective, (seeking) to understand these issues in light of new technology, both by changing the technology and by educating users about technology's benefits, costs, and limits."

Technology and Society (continued)

Educate public and policy makers about web capabilities and how these affect and are affected by proposed policies.

“support a diverse range of public policy options without cultural fragmentation or domination.”

Technology and Society Domain

Activities Metadata

• RDF

Digital Signature Initiative various privacy and security-related

initiatives.

“Domains”

User Interface

Technology and Society

Architecture

Web Accessibility Initiative

Architecture

HTTP XML naming and addressing web characterization

XML

XML Schema XML Linking Namespaces XML Core Canonical XML XML Information Set XML Query language

“Domains”

User Interface

Technology and Society

Architecture

Web Accessibility Initiative

Web Accessibility Initiative

promote web-usability and accessibility with respect to various:

• constraints

•and disabilities

Constraints

noisy surroundings poor illumination eyes, ears, or hands busy (e.g.driving to work) loud environment early version of browser, voice browser, different

operating system text-only screen, small screen, slow Internet

connection.

Disabilities

inability to see, hear, move, process certain types of information

difficulty reading or comprehending text inability to use a keyboard or mouse lack of fluency of the language in which a

document is written

Guidelines Produced by WAI

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

User Agent Accessibility guidelines

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

• how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities.

User Agent Accessibility guidelines

• Designing user agents accessible to people with disabilities -- graphical desktop browsers, multi-media players, text/voice browsers, plug-ins, other assistive technologies.

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines

• How to design authoring tools that produce accessible web content, and create accessible authoring interfaces.

W3c in 7 Pointshttp://www.w3.org/Consortium/Points/

Universal Access Semantic Web Trust Interoperability Evolvability Decentralization Cooler Multimedia!

Universal Access

Internationalization Mobile Access TVWeb Voice Browser Web Accessibility Initiative

Semantic Web

RDF XML digital signatures

Trust

digital signatures annotation mechanisms group authoring versioning

Improved Multimedia

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) language Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language

(SMIL). To achieve:

• interactivity

• richer media

• resizable images

• quality sound, video, 3D effects

• animation?

IETF and W3C

Open. Meetings attended by anyone who wishes to participate.

Effective for collection of ideas, and providing criticism, from a wide community.

Domain: Internet protocols

Assigns defined groups of committed experts to solve specific tasks.

effective at producing specifications likely to meet the needs of mem-bers and the community.

Domain: architecture of the Web