The W3C Membership approved the 2025 W3C Process Document, which takes effect today, 18 August 2025. Major changes: Removing the Proposed Recommendation phase of the Recommendation track, and applying the Advisory Committee (AC) Review instead directly to the Candidate Recommendation. This maintains the qualifications for Recommendation while reducing administrative steps. Introducing a new Charter Refinement phase to formalize the issue-tracking and decision-making of our currently informal review phase prior to Member Review (AC Review) of a charter. The goals of this new phase are to: Reduce the number of Formal Objections raised during AC Review that could have been avoided by solving small problems earlier and developing consensus on larger ones through dialog. Ensuring that comments get addressed, and not ignored, by those developing the charter. Making the chartering process more understandable, and therefore easier to participate in. Other significant changes: Requiring higher ...

The   Verifiable Credentials Working Group   invites implementations of the following Candidate Recommendation Snapshot:   Controlled Identifiers (CIDs) v1.0 . A controlled identifier document contains cryptographic material and lists service endpoints for the purposes of verifying cryptographic proofs from, and interacting with, the controller of an identifier. Comments are welcome via  GitHub issues  by 28 February 2025.

  The   Publishing Maintenance Working Group   has proposed corrections to the W3C Recommendation of   EPUB 3.3 . EPUB® 3 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. This specification defines the authoring requirements for   EPUB publications   and represents the third major revision of the standard. Proposed corrections are marked in the document. Comments, including implementation experience, are welcome via  GitHub  through  10 March 2025 .

  The   Verifiable Credentials Working Group   invites implementations of the   Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0   Candidate Recommendation Snapshot. Credentials are a part of our daily lives; driver's licenses are used to assert that we are capable of operating a motor vehicle, university degrees can be used to assert our level of education, and government-issued passports enable us to travel between countries. This specification provides a mechanism to express these sorts of credentials on the Web in a way that is cryptographically secure, privacy respecting, and machine-verifiable. The group is actively seeking comments and implementation feedback for this specification as issues raised in the document's   Github repository   by   01 April 2024 . The group has also published a Working Group Note of  VC Specifications Directory , which serves as an unofficial directory for all known Verifiable Credential specifications whether they ar...

  The   Dataset Exchange Working Group   invites implementations of the   Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) - Version 3   Candidate Recommendation Snapshot. DCAT is an RDF vocabulary designed to facilitate interoperability between data catalogs published on the Web. This document defines a major revision of the DCAT 2 vocabulary ([ VOCAB-DCAT-2 ]) in response to use cases, requirements and community experience which could not be considered during the previous vocabulary development. This revision extends the DCAT standard in line with community practice while supporting diverse approaches to data description and dataset exchange. Comments are welcome via the  GitHub issues  by  15 February 2024 .

  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 .

  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 .

  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 .

  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 .

  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 .

  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 .

  The   EPUB 3 Working Group   has published a First Public Working Draft of   EPUB Accessibility 1.1 . This document specifies content conformance requirements for verifying the accessibility of EPUB Publications. It also specifies accessibility metadata requirements for the discoverability of EPUB Publications. The document takes an abstract approach to the accessibility requirements for EPUB Publications, similar to how WCAG 2 separates its accessibility guidelines from the techniques to achieve them. This approach allows the guidelines to remain stable even as the format evolves. To facilitate this approach, a companion  EPUB Accessibility Techniques 1.1  has also been published today as a W3C Working Group Note, which outlines conformance techniques. These techniques explain how to meet the requirements of this document for different versions of EPUB. The Working Group welcomes comments via the  GitHub repository issues .

  12 January 2021 The  EPUB 3 Working Group  has published four First Public Working Drafts today for EPUB 3.3. This technology 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 specification represents the third major revision and, in particular, a revision of the  EPUB 3.2 document  published by the EPUB 3 Community Group. This new version of the specification is now on a W3C Recommendation Track. The four documents published by the Working Group are: The  EPUB 3.3  specification defines the authoring requirements for EPUB Publications and represents the third major revision of the standard. The  EPUB 3.3 Reading Systems  specification defines the conformance requirements for EPUB 3...

W3C is pleased to announce a  report  from the  W3C Workshop on Inclusive Design for Immersive Web Standards , held on 5-6 November 2019 in Seattle, WA, USA. This report contains a brief summary and collects highlights from the individual sessions, with links to the presentation slides. Workshop participants learned from existing approaches that have been taken in making XR experiences (on and off the Web) accessible before looking at what lessons could be derived from these existing research and experiments in the context of the Immersive Web architecture. These lessons brought forward four aspects of accessible XR experiences: visual interactions, motricity considerations, audio aspects and assistive technologies adaptation. The relevant follow-up work in W3C spans across at least 6 standardization Working Groups and 6 pre-standardization and incubation Community Groups, and also intersects with at least 3 Khronos Working Groups – pointing toward the need f...

20 June 2019 The  Publishing Working Group  has published a First Public Working Draft of  Audiobook Profile for Web Publications . This profile, derived from the structure laid out in the  Web Publications specification , has been developed to address a major gap in the publishing ecosystem. Unlike the ebooks industry which predominantly uses the  EPUB standard , Audiobooks never developed a common specification. This has created a distribution model where content creators create many different files for their distributors or retailers, leaving users behind. Our profile is focused on bringing a common, single manifest format to the industry. The manifest centers on providing a simple way for content creators to include identifying metadata, a reading order, and additional resources. Identifying metadata includes information like title, author, narrator, identifier, and duration. The reading order is designed to provide user agents with a single source ...

24 April 2019 W3C has published a new version of its  Roadmap of Web Applications on Mobile , an overview of the various technologies developed in W3C that increase the capabilities of Web applications, and how they apply more specifically to the mobile context. The April 2019 snapshot introduces a few additional technologies under incubation in the Web Platform Incubator Community Group and refreshes the status of other specifications. See the  Change history  for details. New exploratory work since the December 2018 snapshot: Cookie Store API, described in  Data Storage KV Storage, described in  Data Storage JS Self-Profiling API, described in  Performance and Tuning Trusted Types, described in  Security and Privacy A few specifications have also progressed along the standardization track, starting with Web Authentication published as a W3C Recommendation (see  Security and Privacy ), including Resize Observer (see  Device ...

22 February 2018 The  Arabic Layout Task Force , part of the  W3C   Internationalization Interest Group , has published a First Public Working Draft of  Text Layout Requirements for the Arabic Script . This document describes the basic requirements for Arabic script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These requirements provide information for Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications about how to support users of Arabic scripts. Currently the document focuses on Standard Arabic and Persian. Public comments are welcome, please raise them as  github issues . Read how W3C  Internationalization (i18n)  is making the World Wide Web worldwide.

3 January 2018 W3C has published a  Roadmap of Web Applications on Mobile , an overview of the various technologies developed in W3C that increase the capabilities of Web applications, and how they apply more specifically to the mobile context. Sponsored by Beihang University, this edition is a redesign of the  Standards for Web Applications on Mobile: current state and roadmap document, published on a quarterly basis from 2011 to 2015. It documents existing standards, highlights ongoing standardization efforts, points out topics under incubation, and discusses technical gaps that may need to be addressed in the future. For instance, the document identifies ongoing work around Progressive Web Applications that allow to create a consistent and persistent lifecycle for applications on the Web platform. New versions will be published on a quarterly basis, or as needed depending on progress of key technologies of the Web platform. The document is part of a set of roadma...

7 December 2017 A final Working Draft of  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1  has been published for wide review before a planned advance to Candidate Recommendation in January 2018. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, which extends Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible to people with disabilities, and more usable to users in general.  Please comment no later than 12 January 2018  in the  WCAG 2.1 GitHub repository  or by email to  public-agwg-comments@w3.org .

02 July 2013 W3C has published a new edition of Standards for Web Applications on Mobile , an overview of the various technologies developed in W3C that increase the power of Web applications, particularly in the mobile context. A deliverable of the webinos project, this edition highlights some of the HTML 5.1 features that are most relevant on mobile, integrates more specs from the SysApps Working Group. It also features a printer-friendly PDF version , and makes it easier to contribute to test suites via github. Learn more about the Web and Mobile Devices .