First Public Working Draft: JSON Web Signature 2020

 The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of JSON Web Signature 2020. This specification describes a JSON Web Signature Suite created in 2020 for the Verifiable Credentials Data Integrity Proof specification. The Signature Suite utilizes Detached JWS signatures to provide support for a subset of the digital signature algorithms registered with IANA.

ACT Rules for accessibility evaluation tools and methodologies

 The Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Task Force published new ACT Rules and implementations. ACT Rules help evaluation tools and methodologies produced accurate, consistent results. They help you test accessibility standards more reliably. Learn more About ACT Rules. We encourage evaluation tools and methodologies to implement the individual ACT Rules and to share your implementation report on the W3C website. Learn about submitting an implementation of ACT Rules.

W3C Opens Advisory Board (AB) Special Election

 

The W3C Advisory Committee has nominated eleven individuals, and is invited today to vote until 14 January 2023 in the special election for the W3C Advisory Board to fill four vacated seats as of January 2023.

Created in March 1998, the Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance to the W3C Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. The Advisory Board also serves the W3C Members by tracking issues raised between Advisory Committee meetings, soliciting Member comments on such issues, and proposing actions to resolve these issues. The Advisory Board manages the evolution of the Process Document. The Advisory Board hears a Submission Appeal when a Member Submission is rejected for reasons unrelated to Web architecture. For several years, the AB has conducted its work in a public wiki.

The elected Members of the Advisory Board participate as individual contributors and not representatives of their organizations. Advisory Board participants use their best judgment to find the best solutions for the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user.

Updated Candidate Recommendation: CSS Values and Units Module Level 3

 The CSS Working Group invites implementation of an updated Candidate Recommendation Snapshot of CSS Values and Units Module Level 3. This CSS module describes the common values and units that CSS properties accept and the syntax used for describing them in CSS property definitions.

First Public Working Draft: RDF Dataset Canonicalization

 The RDF Dataset Canonicalization and Hash Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of RDF Dataset Canonicalization.This document describes an algorithm for canonicalizing RDF datasets, based on a final CG report from the Credentials Community Group. This provides a foundation for comparing the differences between RDF datasets, digitally signing them, or generating short identifiers for them via hashing algorithms.

CSS Snapshot 2022 Draft Note Published

 The CSS Working Group has published a first public Draft Note of CSS Snapshot 2022. This document collects together into one definition all the specs that together form the current state of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as of 2022. The primary audience is CSS implementers, not CSS authors, as this definition includes modules by specification stability, not Web browser adoption rate.

CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, etc.

FOR REVIEW: Collaboration Tools Accessibility User Requirements First Public Draft Note

 The Accessible Platform Architectures (APA) Research Questions Task Force (RQTF) welcomes feedback on the first public Draft Note of the Collaboration Tools Accessibility User Requirements. The purpose of this document is to outline various accessibility-related user needs, requirements and scenarios for collaboration tools. The solutions identified in this document are intended to influence the evolution of future accessibility guidelines, technical specifications, or features of collaboration tools and assistive technologies. They are relevant to software developers who contribute to any of these aspects of the collaborative experience. Please send comments by 30 December 2022.

W3C opens Technical Architecture Group (TAG) election

 

The W3C Advisory Committee, having nominated seven individuals, is invited today to vote until 13 December 2022 for three seats in the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) election.

The TAG is a special working group within the W3C, chartered under the W3C Process Document, with stewardship of the Web architecture. Some aspects of its mission include:

• to document and build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary;
• to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG;
• to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C.

First Public Working Draft: Verifiable Credential Data Integrity 1.0

 The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of the Verifiable Credential Data Integrity 1.0. This specification describes mechanisms for ensuring the authenticity and integrity of Verifiable Credentials and similar types of constrained digital documents using cryptography, especially through the use of digital signatures and related mathematical proofs.

W3C Invites Implementations of WebXR Augmented Reality Module — Level 1

 The Immersive Web Working Group invites implementations of a new Candidate Recommendation of WebXR Augmented Reality Module – Level 1, which expands the WebXR Device API with the functionality available on AR hardware.

W3C Workshop Report: WCG and HDR for the Web

 W3C is pleased to announce the report from the W3C Workshop on Wide Color Gamut and High Dynamic Range for the Web, held online in July-September 2021.

This report contains an executive summary, introduces the subject area, discusses major topics from the live sessions, links to the presentation videos and session minutes, and details next steps that were taken, and continue to be explored, after the workshop.

The workshop connected the color science, content creation and web platform communities and explored the current, ongoing transition of the web platform from the legacy sRGB, narrow gamut, standard dynamic range world of the previous quarter century, through wide color gamut, and onto high dynamic range.

15 workshop talks were published and discussed online in five live sessions. The main outcomes are that:

• Standardization efforts on WCG and HDR are in-place and ongoing at W3C, the International Color Consortium, the Alliance for Open Media, and other fora
• A Color API for the Web is currently being incubated in WICG, and when more mature will require formation of a new W3C Working Group
• Interoperability for WCG-aware Web specifications has been a focus for the last year, including Interop 2022
• Canvas has already been extended to WCG, and HDR in Canvas is at the prototype stage
• Handling of HDR content, in particular HDR tone mapping for a wide range of displays and viewing environments, needs significant further discussion and experimentation.

W3C thanks the Program Committee, workshop speakers, and all participants for making this event possible and for continuing to work together to explore the next steps in the year since the live sessions. Substantial progress has already been made. Join us in continuing this important effort.

W3C Invites Implementations of Resource Timing

 The Web Performance Working Group invites implementations of a new Candidate Recommendation of Resource Timing. This specification defines interfaces for web applications to access the complete timing information for resources in a document, as user latency is an important quality benchmark for Web Applications.

First Public Working Draft: Trace Context Level 2

 29 September 2022

The Distributed Tracing Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Trace Context Level 2. This specification defines standard HTTP headers and a value format to propagate context information that enables distributed tracing scenarios. The specification standardizes how context information is sent and modified between services. Context information uniquely identifies individual requests in a distributed system and also defines a means to add and propagate provider-specific context information.

First Public Working Draft: A Well-Known URL for Changing Passwords

 The Web Application Security Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of A Well-Known URL for Changing Passwords. This specification defines a well-known URL that sites can use to make their change password forms discoverable by tools. This simple affordance provides a way for software to help the user find the way to change their password.

First Public Working Draft: Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 4.0

 The Math Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 4.0. MathML is a markup language for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this for text.

This specification is intended primarily for those who will be developing or implementing renderers or editors, or software that will communicate using MathML.

About 38 of the MathML tags describe abstract notational structures, while another about 170 provide a way of unambiguously specifying the intended meaning of an expression.

While MathML is human-readable, authors typically will use equation editors, conversion programs, and other specialized software tools to generate MathML.

MathML4 is the 4th version of the language, which started with MathML 1 in 1998.

Payment Request API and Payment Method Identifiers are W3C Recommendations

 The Web Payments Working Group have published Recommendations of Payment Request API and Payment Method Identifiers.

Payment Request standardizes an API to allow merchants (i.e., web sites selling physical or digital goods) to utilize one or more payment methods with minimal integration. Browsers facilitate the payment flow between merchant and user. Payment Method Identifiers defines payment method identifiers and how they are validated, and, where applicable, minted and formally registered with the W3C.

Please see the disposition of comments following review by the W3C Membership.

Draft Note: W3C Accessibility Maturity Model

 

The Accessible Platform Architectures (APA) Working Group has published a first Draft Note of the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model. The W3C Accessibility Maturity Model best practices document enables organizations to implement processes and systems in key areas that can objectively measure whether the correct steps have been taken to keep the entire product experience accessible.

Comments are welcome through 16 October 2022.

First Public Working Draft: Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0

 The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft today for the Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0. This specification provides a mechanism to express credentials (driving license, university degree, vaccination documents, etc.) on the Web in a way that is cryptographically secure, privacy respecting, and machine-verifiable.

This First Public Working Group Draft is, essentially, identical to the Verifiable Credentials Data Model v1.1 Recommendation, published by the Working Group in March 2022. It is a starting point for the development of what will become the next major revision of the technology.

The Working Group welcomes comments via the GitHub repository issues.

First Public Working Draft: Payment Request API 1.1

 The Web Payments Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Payment Request API 1.1. This specification standardizes an API to allow merchants (i.e. web sites selling physical or digital goods) to utilize one or more payment methods with minimal integration. User agents (e.g., browsers) facilitate the payment flow between merchant and user. The 1.1 version makes some clarifications about how to process optional data to payment request, and adds the ability to pass optional data when a payment response calls .complete().

Working Group Note: Accessibility of Remote Meetings

 The Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group has published Accessibility of Remote Meetings as a Group Note. It is a companion to the W3C resource: How to Make Your Presentations and Meetings Accessible to All. Remote meeting is an umbrella term used to describe real-time discussions or presentations held between two or more parties online. The issues faced by people with disabilities will vary depending on the implementation of accessibility requirements and current limitations of remote meeting software. While W3C has applicable guidance across several standards and Notes relating to real-time communication and XR, it is this level of complexity that this document endeavors to address. For more information, see the blog post Accessibility of Remote Meetings Published as W3C Group Note.

Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 is a W3C Recommendation

 

The Decentralized Identifier Working Group has published Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 as a W3C Recommendation.

This document defines Decentralized identifiers (DIDs), a new type of identifier that enables verifiable, decentralized digital identity. A DID identifies any subject (e.g., a person, organization, thing, data model, abstract entity, etc.) that the controller of the DID decides that it identifies. In contrast to typical, federated identifiers, DIDs have been designed so that they may be decoupled from centralized registries, identity providers, and certificate authorities. DIDs are URIs that associate a DID subject with a DID document allowing trustable interactions associated with that subject. Each DID document can express cryptographic material, verification methods, or services, which provide a set of mechanisms enabling a DID controller to prove control of the DID. Please read our Press Release to learn more about this tool to empower everyone on the web with privacy-respecting online identity and consent-based data sharing.

W3C offers an Inclusion Fund and Fellowships for TPAC 2022

 

As 60% of the world is now online, we want and need to reflect the diversity of the whole world as more people continue to access, use and create the web. We believe that more diversity means better representation, which leads to better and more inclusive design. More diversity also brings higher quality results.

We are opening today the W3C TPAC Inclusion Fund & Honorarium Fellowships applications, until 31 July. Both offerings are designed for people from an under-represented group who wouldn’t be able to attend or meaningfully contribute to TPAC without financial support.

We are grateful to this year’s sponsors W3C, Coil, Microsoft, Siteimprove, Igalia and an anonymous donor.

You can read more about these programs on the TPAC 2022 registration page, and you can read our CEO Jeff Jaffe 2022 update on diversity and inclusion at W3C.

Authorized Translation of WCAG 2.1 in French

 

The World Wide Web Consortium published the Authorized French Translation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Règles pour l’accessibilité des contenus Web (WCAG) 2.1. The Lead Translation Organization for this Authorized Translation was the Access42.

Translations in other languages are listed in WCAG 2 Translations. W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) particularly encourages the development of Authorized Translations of WCAG 2.1 and other technical specifications to facilitate their adoption and implementation internationally. Read about the Policy for W3C Authorized Translations.

W3C Invites Implementations of CSS Color Module Level 4

 The CSS Working Group invites implementations of a Candidate Recommendation Snapshot of CSS Color Module Level 4. This specification describes CSS <color> values, and properties for foreground color and group opacity.

CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, etc.

W3C to become a public-interest non-profit organization

 

We are pleased to announce today that W3C is to become a public-interest non-profit organization. The design of the new legal entity has been taking several years because of the imperative to preserve the core mission of the Consortium to shepherd the web by developing open standards with contributions from W3C Members, staff, and the international community. In the months leading to the launch of a new legal entity in January 2023, we will release further details. Please find more information in our media advisory about the original Hosted model that is being replaced and what it helped W3C accomplish in 28 years, the reasons for change and why we must preserve our standards development process, and our next steps.

W3C joins leading standards organizations and companies to coordinate interoperability standards for an open and inclusive metaverse

 

The Metaverse Standards Forum launched on June 21, 2022, of which the Web Consortium is a founding member, among other key actors whose focus is on leading platforms, hardware, tools, engines, users. The forum, whose membership is free, and open to any organization, brings together leading standards organizations and companies for industry-wide cooperation on interoperability standards needed to build an open and inclusive metaverse.

W3C immersive web strategist Dominique Hazaël-Massieux declared “The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is joining the Metaverse Standards Forum to accelerate the coordination with other standards organizations and metaverse stakeholders in building an interoperable platform for the metaverse, in which W3C’s Immersive Web vision is set to play a critical role.”

The first meetings of the Metaverse Standards Forum will start in July 2022.

W3C Invites Implementations of CSS Custom Properties for Cascading Variables Module Level 1

 The CSS Working Group invites implementations of a Candidate Recommendation Snapshot of CSS Custom Properties for Cascading Variables Module Level 1. This module introduces cascading variables as a new primitive value type that is accepted by all CSS properties, and custom properties for defining them.

CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, etc.

Hiring: North America Business Development Lead (North America, Canada)

 

We are excited to announce an immediate job opening: North America Business Development Lead.

The position is based in the USA or Canada, for remote work-from-home, as a full-time contractor with the opportunity to become an employee of W3C, Inc.

We are looking for a results-driven and dynamic Business Development Leader to drive recruiting W3C Members in the Americas, attend and present at industry events for active recruitment, and community and relationship building. The individual will join the W3C Business Development Team.

 

The W3C Advisory Committee has elected the following people to fill five seats on the W3C Advisory Board starting 1 July 2022: Wei Ding (Huawei), Tatsuya Igarashi (Sony), Florian Rivoal (W3C Invited Expert), Tzviya Siegman (Wiley) and David Singer (Apple) will join continuing participants Heejin Chung (Samsung), Avneesh Singh (DAISY Consortium), Eric Siow (Intel), Léonie Watson (TetraLogical), Chris Wilson (Google) and Hongru (Judy) Zhu (Alibaba). Many thanks to the 6 candidates, and to Tantek Çelik (Mozilla) whose term ends this month.

Created in March 1998, the Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance to the W3C Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. The Advisory Board manages the evolution of the Process Document. The elected Members of the Advisory Board participate as individual contributors and not representatives of their organizations. Advisory Board participants use their best judgment to find the best solutions for the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user. Read more about the Advisory Board and its work.

First Public Working Draft: Capture Handle — Bootstrapping Collaboration when Screensharing

The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Capture Handle – Bootstrapping Collaboration when Screensharing. This document proposes a mechanism by which an application APP can opt-in to exposing certain information with another application CAPTR, if CAPTR is screen-capturing the tab in which APP is running. It describes a mechanism for tab capture only. 

W3C Strategic Highlights, April 2022

 

W3C released today to the public the April 2022 edition of the W3C Strategic Highlights. This report summarizes recent work W3C Members and the public do at the Web Consortium to enhance the web and innovate for its growth and strength.

This semi-annual report includes comprehensive updates in key areas that are core to the web platform, how W3C meets the needs of industry and society as a whole, how the future of web standards is determined, and the latest information on web for all and outreach to the world.

WebAssembly 2.0 First Public Working Drafts

 The WebAssembly Working Group has published three First Public Working Drafts:

• WebAssembly Core Specification – Version 2.0 describes version 2.0 of the core WebAssembly standard, a safe, portable, low-level code format designed for efficient execution and compact representation.
• WebAssembly JavaScript Interface – Version 2.0 provides an explicit JavaScript API for interacting with WebAssembly.
• WebAssembly Web API – Version 2.0 describes the integration of WebAssembly with the broader web platform.

The WebAssembly Working Group maintains a list of proposals finished since the last Recommendation and monitors the progress of “in-flight” proposals.

W3C TPAC 2022 will be a hybrid meeting

 

We are able today to confirm that W3C’s annual conference, the Technical Plenary and Advisory Committee meeting known as “TPAC” will be held as a hybrid meeting on 12-16 September 2022.

The main in-person hub will be at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre in Canada and we are also planning to have a hub in China to provide an in-person gathering place to support a minimum number of sessions.

Our main goal for this meeting is to ensure the safety of our onsite attendees and make sure that all the participants, whether remote or in-person, have a fruitful and valuable experience. The usual group meetings and breakout sessions will take place as well as other type of sessions. We expect registration to open early July.

We are in the process of optimizing the many aspects of the whole event in order to accommodate the hybrid format, and so will share in the coming weeks details on the agenda, the hotel rooms booking, the registration fees and the health rules.

W3C invites implementations of WebXR Device API

 The Immersive Web Working Group invites implementations of WebXR Device API. This specification describes support for accessing virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) devices, including sensors and head-mounted displays, on the Web.

Comments are welcome as GitHub issues by 28 April 2022.

Preload Published as a Discontinued Draft

The Web Performance Working Group published the Preload specification as a Discontinued Draft. The content is now integrated in the HTML living standard.

Publication as a Discontinued Draft implies that this document is no longer intended to advance or to be maintained. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than abandoned work.

First Public Working Draft: Autoplay Policy Detection

 The Media Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Autoplay Policy Detection. This specification provides web developers the ability to detect if automatically starting the playback of a media file is allowed in different situations.

The Working Group welcomes comments via the GitHub repository issues.

W3C/SMPTE Workshop Report: Professional Media Production on the Web

 

W3C is pleased to announce a report from the W3C/SMPTE Workshop on Professional Media Production on the Web, held online in October/November 2021.

This report contains a brief summary, collects highlights from the live sessions, links to the presentation videos, and details next steps.

The workshop connected the web platform and the professional media production communities and explored evolutions of the web platform to address professional media production requirements. 24 workshop talks were published in October 2021, about 40 issues were discussed online, and 3 live sessions were held mid-November 2021 that convened more than 75 experts to exchange on specific media production needs for the web platform.

The main outcomes are that:

• The web platform already provides building blocks to enable core media production scenarios.
• These building blocks are not powerful enough to create full-fledged experiences on client devices.
• Most of the gaps raised during the workshop touch on API features in specifications that are already being developed. There is however benefit to coordinating effort to make sure that media production needs are correctly captured and addressed in ongoing standardization activities.

Workshop discussions call for a more in-depth analysis of some of the topics, and workshop participants propose the creation of a Media Production Task Force that the Media & Entertainment Interest Group could host. The Task Force would be scoped to professional media production using the web platform, and responsible for documenting use cases and needs specific to professional media production, quantifying performance issues, promoting proposals to working groups and implementers, and tracking standardization progress and implementations. Workshop organizers are working with workshop participants and Media & Entertainment Interest Group chairs to facilitate the creation of the task force.

Last Call for Review of Proposed Corrections: WOFF File Format 2.0 Recommendation

 The Web Fonts Working Group has proposed corrections to the W3C Recommendation of WOFF File Format 2.0. Based on experience with WOFF 1.0, which is widely deployed, this specification was developed to provide improved compression and thus lower use of network bandwidth, while still allowing fast decompression even on mobile devices. This is achieved by combining a content-aware preprocessing step and improved entropy coding, compared to the Flate compression used in WOFF 1.0.

Draft Note: MiniApp Addressing

 The MiniApps Working Group has just published a Draft Note of MiniApp Addressing. This specification defines how MiniApps are located, which is called MiniApp Addressing, including the specifications for specific MiniApp URI syntax components based on the URI specification, and the process to dereference the MiniApp URI. Implementing this specification enables the user agent to locate the resources of MiniApp.

The Working Group is publishing this specification as a Draft Note to encourage early review. Comments are welcome via the GitHub repository.

Media Capture Depth Stream Extensions Published as a Discontinued Draft

 The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group published today Media Capture Depth Stream Extensions as a Discontinued Draft, due to lack of implementation momentum. The specification expected to extend the Media Capture and Streams specification to allow a depth stream to be requested from the web platform using APIs familiar to web authors.

Publication as a Discontinued Draft implies that this document is no longer intended to advance or to be maintained. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than abandoned work.

W3C Web Fonts Working Group honored in 2021 Emmy® Awards

 

The National Academy of Arts and Sciences has released its 2021 list of Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards today and we were delighted to discover that the Web Fonts Working Group, along with MPEG, will be honored for standardizing font technology for custom downloadable fonts and typography for web and TV devices.

This award represents the culmination of a quarter-century of work at W3C. Web Fonts enable people to use fonts on demand over the web without requiring installation in the operating system. W3C has experience in downloadable fonts through HTML, CSS2, and SVG. Downloadable fonts were not common on the web due to the lack of an interoperable font format. The Web Fonts effort addresses that through the creation of an industry-supported, open font format for the web called “WOFF” (Web Open Font Format) whose version 2, which became a standard in 2018, is deployed in all major web browsers and powers a vast majority of sites.

This is the third Emmy® Award in Technical & Engineering W3C has won. We will be working with our colleagues to send delegates to the ceremony that will be part of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas on April 25, 2022.

The Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards are awarded to a living individual, a company, or a scientific or technical organization for developments and/or standardization involved in engineering technologies that either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they materially have affected television.