W3C Advisory Committee Elects Technical Architecture Group

 The W3C Advisory Committee has elected the following people to fill five seats on the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) starting 1 February 2024: Daniel Appelquist, Matthew Atkinson, Peter Linss, Dapeng Liu and Martin Thomson. They join TAG Emeritus Chair Tim Berners-Lee and continuing participants, Hadley Beeman, Amy Guy, Theresa O'Connor and Lea Verou. Yves Lafon continues as staff contact. Many thanks to the 7 candidates, and thanks for contributions to the TAG to the departing participants, Rossen Atanassov and Sangwhan Moon, whose terms end at the end of January 2024.

The TAG is a special group within the W3C, chartered under the W3C Process Document, with stewardship of the Web architecture. The mission of the TAG is to 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, and to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C. The Members of the TAG participate as individual contributors, not as representatives of their organizations. TAG participants use their best judgment to find the best solutions for the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user. Learn more about the TAG.

Starting this election, the W3C Team is implementing new rules set forth by the Process Document regarding TAG appointees. A call for nominations is open until January 5, 2024. Please read about this in --and help promote-- our blog post.

W3C Web of Things 1.1 specifications are W3C Recommendations

 

The Web of Things Working Group published today three W3C Recommendations and recently updated supporting W3C Notes, thus enhancing with new functionalities the standards that enable interoperability across IoT platforms and application domains:

• Web of Things Architecture 1.1 describes the abstract architecture for the W3C Web of Things for multiple application domains;
• Web of Things Thing Description 1.1 describes the metadata and interfaces of Things, which are abstractions of physical or virtual entities that interact to and participate in the Web of Things;
• Web of Things Discovery supports the distribution of WoT Thing Descriptions in a variety of use cases, including ad-hoc and engineered systems, during development and at runtime, and on local and global networks.

These new W3C Recommendations improve and expand the scope of the Web of Things without breaking compatibility with the first release in 2020, using web technology to harmonize access to diverse IoT devices and breaks silo walls. Please, read more in our Press Release.

W3C Invites Implementations of VC Data Integrity, Data Integrity EdDSA and ECDSA Cryptosuites, and VC JSON Schema

 The Verifiable Credentials Working Group invites implementations of the following Candidate Recommendation Snapshots:

• Verifiable Credential Data Integrity 1.0 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.
• Data Integrity EdDSA Cryptosuites v1.0 describes a Data Integrity cryptographic suite for use when creating or verifying a digital signature using the twisted Edwards Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) and Curve25519 (ed25519).
• Data Integrity ECDSA Cryptosuites v1.0 describes a Data Integrity Cryptosuite for use when generating a digital signature using the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA).
• Verifiable Credentials JSON Schema Specification: Among other things, the [VC-DATA-MODEL-2.0] specifies the models used for Verifiable Credentials, Verifiable Presentations, and explains the relationships between three parties: issuers, holders, and verifiers. Verifiability, extensibility, and semantic interoperability are critical pieces of functionality referenced throughout the [VC-DATA-MODEL-2.0]. This specification provides a mechanism to make use of a Credential Schema in Verifiable Credential, leveraging the existing Data Schemas concept.

Comments are welcome via GitHub issues by 24 January 2024.

W3C updates its 2023 Process Document

 W3C has approved the updated 2023 Process Document, which takes effect today. The only change is expanding the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) from 6 elected and 3 appointed participants to 8 elected and 3 appointed participants. 

The TAG consists of: Tim Berners-Lee who is a life member; 3 participants appointed by the W3C Team; 8 participants elected by the W3C Advisory Committee following the AB/TAG nomination and election process. 

You can read the Disposition of Comments for rationale or peruse the diff from the previous version. 

W3C Process Document is developed by the Advisory Board’s Process Task Force working within the W3C Process Community Group. Comments and feedback on the Process Document may be sent as issues in the public GitHub Repository.

W3C Invites Implementations of RDF Dataset Canonicalization

 The RDF Dataset Canonicalization and Hash Working Group invites implementations of the RDF Dataset Canonicalization Candidate Recommendation Snapshot. RDF [RDF11-CONCEPTS] describes a graph-based data model for making claims about the world and provides the foundation for reasoning upon that graph of information. At times, it becomes necessary to compare the differences between sets of graphs, digitally sign them, or generate short identifiers for graphs via hashing algorithms. This document outlines an algorithm for normalizing RDF datasetssuch that these operations can be performed.

Group Note: RDF Dataset Canonicalization and Hash Working Group — Explainer and Use Cases

 The RDF Dataset Canonicalization and Hash Working Group has published a Group Note of RDF Dataset Canonicalization and Hash Working Group — Explainer and Use Cases. This is a supporting document for the RDF Dataset Canonicalization specification, providing some extra explanation of the problem space and associated use cases.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 is a W3C Recommendation

 The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) published Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 as a W3C Recommendation. WCAG and supporting documents explain how to make content more accessible to people with disabilities. For an introduction to WCAG, see the WCAG 2 Overview. WCAG 2.2 adds 9 requirements (called success criteria) since WCAG 2.1. These success criteria improve accessibility for people with visual, physical, and cognitive disabilities. For example, they expand guidance for touch input. To learn more about WCAG 2.2, see What's New in WCAG 2.2.

Draft Note: Client-Edge-Cloud coordination Use Cases and Requirements

 The Web & Networks Interest Group has published a first Draft Note of Client-Edge-Cloud coordination Use Cases and Requirements. This document explores how the traditional client/server architecture used by Web applications could be improved by including edge computing resources, based on use cases and requirements and what new interoperable technologies would be needed to that end.

Diversity report 2023

 W3C released today the 2023 diversity report. As part of our commitment and continued focus on diversity and inclusion, since 2018 we annually report on gender and geographic diversity at W3C.

We would like W3C to be a model of supporting diversity. As an international organization, we can see the immense value we gain from having greater gender diversity, and expertise from across multiple countries and cultures. The diversity of the whole world needs to be reflected, as 60% of the world is now online and as more people continue to access and use the Web that we develop the standards of, here together at the Web Consortium.

We believe that more diversity means better representation, which leads to better and more inclusive design. Indeed, more background, more use cases, more edge cases, lead to a better Web. More diversity also brings higher quality results.

This year again, we are able to financially help cover TPAC 2023 meeting travel costs for three persons from groups under-represented in the web community. We are grateful for the TPAC 2023 Inclusion Fund sponsors: W3C, Tetralogical, Igalia, University of Illinois Chicago, and an anonymous donor

W3C Invites Implementations of CSS View Transitions Module Level 1

 The CSS Working Group invites implementations of the CSS View Transitions Module Level 1 Candidate Recommendation Snapshot. This module defines the View Transition API, along with associated properties and pseudo-elements, which allows developers to create animated visual transitions representing changes in the document state. 

Comments are welcome via the GitHub issues by 5 December 2023.

Draft Note: Catalan Gap Analysis

 The Internationalization Working Group has published a first Draft Note of Catalan Gap Analysis. This document describes and prioritises gaps for the support of Catalan on the Web and in eBooks. In particular, it is concerned with text layout. It checks that needed features are supported in W3C specifications, in particular HTML and CSS and those relating to digital publications. It also checks whether the features have been implemented in browsers and ereaders. This is a preliminary analysis.

Draft Note: Guidance on Applying WCAG 2.2 to Non-Web Information and Communications Technologies (WCAG2ICT)

 The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) and the WCAG2ICT Task Force has published Guidance on Applying WCAG 2.2 to Non-Web Information and Communications Technologies (WCAG2ICT) as a Group Draft Note. This document is a first draft update to the previous WCAG2ICT Note that provided guidance on applying WCAG 2.0 to non-web documents and software. This updated draft includes guidance for WCAG 2.1 success criteria and glossary terms. The group will add guidance for WCAG 2.2 success criteria in upcoming drafts. For an introduction, see the WCAG2ICT Overview

Call for Review: WoT Architecture 1.1, Thing Description 1.1 and WoT Discovery are W3C Proposed Recommendations

 The Web of Things Working Group has just published three Proposed Recommendations for WoT. The W3C Web of Things (WoT) enables interoperability across IoT platforms and application domains. The goal of the WoT is to preserve and complement existing IoT standards and solutions. The W3C WoT architecture is designed to describe what exists, and only prescribes new mechanisms when necessary.

The three Proposed Recommendations are:

• Web of Things (WoT) Architecture 1.1 describes the abstract architecture for the W3C Web of Things based on a set of requirements derived from use cases for multiple application domains. This specification describes a superset of the features defined in the WoT Architecture 1.0 specification.
• Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description 1.1 describes the metadata and interfaces of Things, where a Thing is an abstraction of a physical or virtual entity that provides interactions to and participates in the Web of Things. This specification describes a superset of the features defined in the WoT Thing Description 1.0 specification.
• Web of Things (WoT) Discovery describes how to discover and obtain the Thing Description of a Thing in a distributed environment for various use cases.

Comments are welcome through 8 August 2023.

Draft Note: Korean Layout Gap Analysis

 The Internationalization Working Group has published a first Draft Note of Korean Layout Gap Analysis. This document describes and prioritises gaps for the support of Korean language on the Web and in eBooks. In particular, it is concerned with text layout. It checks that needed features are supported in W3C specifications, in particular HTML and CSS and those relating to digital publications. It also checks whether the features have been implemented in browsers and ereaders. This is a preliminary analysis.

Web Share API is a W3C Recommendation

 The Web Applications Working Group has published Web Share API as a W3C Recommendation. This specification defines an API for sharing text, links and other content to an arbitrary destination of the user’s choice. The available share targets are not specified here; they are provided by the user agent. They could, for example, be apps, websites or contacts.

Updated Candidate Recommendations: UI Events KeyboardEvent code and key Values

 The Web Applications Working Group invites implementations of the following two updated Candidate Recommendation Snapshots:

• UI Events KeyboardEvent code Values defines the values for the KeyboardEvent.code attribute, which is defined as part of the UI Events Specification [UIEvents]. The code value contains information about the key event that can be used to identify the physical key being pressed by the user.
• UI Events KeyboardEvent key Values defines the key attribute values that must be used for KeyboardEvent‘s key attribute, which is defined as part of the UI Events Specification [UIEvents].

EPUB 3.3 becomes a W3C Recommendation

 

The EPUB 3 Working Group has published EPUB 3.3, EPUB Reading Systems 3.3 and EPUB Accessibility 1.1 as W3C Recommendations, as part of the Digital Publishing activity.

EPUB defines a distribution and interchange format for digital publications and documents. The EPUB format provides a means of representing, packaging, and encoding structured and semantically enhanced web content — including HTML, CSS, SVG, and other resources — for distribution in a single-file container.

The content specification, which is what publishers, creators, or authors are really interested in, is now separate from the reading system specification that is of primary interest for implementers only. Editorial changes made the documents more readable.

Accessibility of EPUB publications was an essential part of the group’s activity. As a result, the EPUB Accessibility specification has been updated and, for the first time in the history of EPUB, is now an integral part of the EPUB Standard. Furthermore, the EPUB Accessibility specification is compatible with the European Accessibility Act whose influence will be significant on Digital Publishing in the years to come.

Finally, please note that this edition of EPUB is dedicated to Garth Conboy, who was one of the original designers of EPUB, and an initiator of the W3C Working Group which produced these new specifications. He is, and will remain, greatly missed.

Please read our Press Release to learn more about this achievement.

W3C opens Advisory Board (AB) election

The W3C Advisory Committee has nominated nine individuals, and is invited today to vote until 1 June 2023 for six seats in the W3C Advisory Board (AB) election. Please, read the statements of the nominees.

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 appeals of Member Submission requests that are 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

First Public Working Drafts: Verifiable Credentials Status List v2021; Securing Verifiable Credentials using JSON Web Tokens

 The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published the following two First Public Working Drafts:

• Verifiable Credentials Status List v2021: This specification describes a privacy-preserving, space-efficient, and high-performance mechanism for publishing status information such as suspension or revocation of Verifiable Credentials.
• Securing Verifiable Credentials using JSON Web Tokens: This specification defines how Verifiable Credentials can be represented as JSON Web Tokens (JWT) [RFC7519] and secured using JSON Web Signatures (JWS) [RFC7515].

World Wide Web Consortium seeking next CEO

 The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is working with leading international executive search firm Perrett Laver to find qualified candidates from around the world to be our CEO.

W3C began 2023 by forming a new public-interest incorporated not-for-profit organization. We are now seeking our next leader at this exciting time in our evolution.

The new organization preserves the core process and mission of the Web Consortium to shepherd the Web, by developing open web standards as a single global organization with contributions from W3C Members, staff, and the international community. The new W3C entity preserves our member-driven approach and existing worldwide outreach and cooperation.

W3C is a unique organization at a crucial transition point in its existence. Reporting to the newly formed Board of Directors, the CEO will be responsible for the success of W3C in line with our mission. The CEO must be an experienced and collaborative leader who appreciates the strong assets of W3C —its expert staff, engaged members, committed Board and fantastic reputation— and has the capacity to effectively leverage these to transform the organization and ensure a bright future and further impact.

The next CEO of W3C will be a strategic, collaborative, and motivating leader. They will have a global mindset and the ability to effectively engage with a diverse range of stakeholders. They will be a person of integrity who is forward thinking and supportive of staff. Most importantly, they will have an affinity for, and understanding of, the work, mission, and values of W3C.

W3C invites applications from qualified CEO candidates from across several continents. Please refer to the Perrett Laver site. The deadline for applications is Friday, May 12th, 2023.

W3C invites implementations of Trace Context Level 2

 The Distributed Tracing Working Group invites implementations of the Trace Context Level 2 Candidate Recommendation Snapshot. 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 Drafts: EdDSA Cryptosuite v2022; ECDSA Cryptosuite v2019

 The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published the following two First Public Working Drafts:

• EdDSA Cryptosuite v2022: This specification describes a Data Integrity cryptographic suite for use when creating or verifying a digital signature using the twisted Edwards Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) and Curve25519 (ed25519).
• ECDSA Cryptosuite v2019: This specification describes a Data Integrity Cryptosuite for use when generating a digital signature using the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) based on the Standards for Efficient Cryptography over prime fields using a verifiably random Elliptic Curve (secpr1).

W3C invites implementations of Web Neural Network API

 The Web Machine Learning Working Group invites implementations of the Web Neural Network API Candidate Recommendation Snapshot.

The Web Neural Network API is a low-level browser API that enables hardware acceleration of machine learning models, opening the way to high-performance privacy-preserving usage of computer vision, natural language processing and generation or speech processing improvements emerging from the recent advances in the field.

Comments are welcome via the GitHub issues by 1 October 2023.

Updated Candidate Recommendation: CSS Display Module Level 3

 The CSS Working Group invites implementations of an updated Candidate Recommendation Snapshot of CSS Display Module Level 3. This module describes how the CSS formatting box tree is generated from the document element tree and defines the display property that controls it.

Comments are welcome via the GitHub issues by 30 May 2023.

First Public Working Draft: CSS Animations Level 2

 The CSS Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of CSS Animations Level 2. This CSS module describes a way for authors to animate the values of CSS properties over time, using keyframes. The behavior of these keyframe animations can be controlled by specifying their duration, number of repeats, and repeating behavior.

W3C welcomes feedback on the beta of its new website

 

W3C invites public feedback on a beta release of the W3C website redesign. The new site features a cleaner and more modern look, a simplified information architecture, improved accessibility, and more integration throughout the site. Once the beta of the English site has concluded, we will offer sites in Japanese and Chinese.

The scope of the redesign is limited to most of our public pages, but we will gradually work to include the rest of the site.

You can read a bit more on the beta and its context in the W3C blog post, and about the redesign work and process in Studio 24’s blog post. We look forward to your feedback.

Call for Review: CSS Box Model Module Level 3 is a W3C Proposed Recommendation

 16 February 2023

The CSS Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of CSS Box Model Module Level 3. This specification describes the margin and padding properties, which create spacing in and around a CSS box.

Comments are welcome through 16 March 2023.

W3C sun-setting online unified validator; community may fork Unicorn

 

W3C plans to stop providing the on-line unified validator service Unicorn as of 31 March 2023, due to lack of resources to maintain the project. We encourage interested people in the community to fork Unicorn. We have many other developer tools such as the markup and CSS validators, and checkers like the Internationalization checker, link and feed checkers.

W3C’s unified validator Unicorn helped improve the quality of Web pages by performing a variety of different checks, by gathering the results of the popular HTML and CSS validators as well as the Feed validator.

Unicorn, which got its name from “unified” and “Conformance Observation Report Notation”, started in April 2006 and was publicly introduced in July 2006. It took another four years before the public release of Unicorn, All-in-One Validator in July 2010.

Authorized Translation of WCAG 2.1 in Catalan

 

The World Wide Web Consortium published the Authorized Catalan Translation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Directrius per a l’accessibilitat del contingut web (WCAG) 2.1. The Lead Translation Organization for this Authorized Translation was the Facultat de Matemàtiques i Informàtica – Universitat de Barcelona.

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 re-launched as a public-interest non-profit organization

 

The World Wide Web Consortium began the year 2023 by forming a new public-interest non-profit organization. The new entity preserves our member-driven approach, existing worldwide outreach and cooperation while allowing for additional partners around the world beyond Europe and Asia. The new organization also preserves the core process and mission of the Consortium to shepherd the web, by developing open web standards as a single global organization with contributions from W3C Members, staff, and the international community.

Our Director, Tim Berners-Lee, noted: “Today, I am proud of the profound impact W3C has had, its many achievements accomplished with our Members and the public, and I look forward to the continued empowering enhancements W3C enables as it launches its own public-interest non-profit organization, building on 28 years of experience.”

Our vision for the future is a web that is truly a force for good. A World Wide Web that is truly international and more inclusive, more respectful of its users. A web that supports truth better than falsehood, people more than profits, humanity rather than hate. A web that works for everyone, because of everyone. To learn more read our press release.

W3C invites implementations of WoT Thing Description 1.1, WoT Discovery and WoT Architecture 1.1

 The Web of Things (WoT) Working Group invites implementations of the following Candidate Recommendations:

• Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description 1.1 describes the metadata and interfaces of Things, where a Thing is an abstraction of a physical or virtual entity that provides interactions to and participates in the Web of Things. This specification describes a superset of the features defined in the WoT Thing Description 1.0 specification.
• Web of Things (WoT) Discovery describes how to discover and obtain the Thing Description of a Thing in a distributed environment for various use cases.
• Web of Things (WoT) Architecture 1.1 describes the abstract architecture for the W3C Web of Things based on a set of requirements derived from use cases for multiple application domains. This specification describes a superset of the features defined in the WoT Architecture 1.0 specification.

W3C Advisory Committee Elects Advisory Board in Special Election

 

The W3C Advisory Committee has elected the following people to fill four seats in a special election of the W3C Advisory Board: Qing An (Alibaba Group), Tantek Çelik (Mozilla Foundation), Elika J Etemad (W3C Invited Expert), Charles Nevile (ConsenSys). Many thanks to the 11 candidates.

The newly elected participants join continuing Advisory Board fellows Heejin Chung (Samsung), Wei Ding (Huawei), Tatsuya Igarashi (Sony), Florian Rivoal (W3C Invited Expert), Tzviya Siegman (Wiley), Avneesh Singh (DAISY Consortium), Chris Wilson (Google).

Many thanks to David Singer (Apple), Eric Siow (Intel), Léonie Watson (TetraLogical), and Hongru Zhu (Alibaba) who stepped down to focus on being members of the W3C Board of Directors.

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.