Testimonials from W3C members and Liaisons

EMVCo • Entersekt • Fime • Mastercard • Nok Nok • Worldline

EMVCo

"Fighting checkout friction is key to businesses delivering a convenient digital shopping experience. Our work initiative with W3C and FIDO Alliance continually seeks to streamline customer authentication and aligns with our broader commitment to support evolving payment habits without compromising security. Collaborative industry work to enhance the interoperability of technologies, such as the Web Payment Security Interest Group, are crucial in delivering smoother, safer checkout experiences for consumers."

Arman Aygen, Director of Technology, EMVCo

Entersekt

"At Entersekt, we are excited to see Secure Payment Confirmation (SPC) advancing to Candidate Recommendation, and the very real advancements it brings to our common goal of keeping global organisations safer, without compromising user experience. W3C and the FIDO Alliance have done tremendous work to promote and mature WebAuthentication. Google, Apple and Microsoft have rolled out support for passkeys to make this available on a global scale. Payments makes up a critical part of a banking customer's journey and SPC now provides for it. EMVCo has already included support for Secure Payment Confirmation in its EMV® 3-D Secure 2.3.1 specification, to enable secure and compliant card payments. We look forward to roll out Secure Payment Confirmation to all our FIDO clients in the banking sector, as a seamless part of our industry leading Context Aware Authentication platform. As one of the Web Payment Working Group chairs, I'm also eager to see how we use the SPC foundation as a stepping stone to further build out other payment and banking related use-cases."

Gerhard Oosthuizen, CTO, Entersekt

Fime

"For online payment transaction, the consumer is highly solicited, increasing the risk of abandonment. In parallel, laws across the world are imposing stronger authentication of the user during a transaction to strengthen security. SPC technology is an effective solution to this dilemma, providing a robust authentication method for browser, without degrading the user experience. At Fime, we are thrilled to see the industry benefit from such a technological breakthrough."

Raphael Guilley, CTO, Fime

Mastercard

"Mastercard is committed to ensuring security and trust across the payments ecosystem, while also providing an exceptional consumer experience. As e-commerce continues to reach new heights around the world, we welcome the introduction of the World Wide Web Consortium’s SPC standardization to support streamlined authentication of consumers across merchants and payment use cases. It’s more important than ever that the online checkout experience is seamless and safe, and this standard is a positive and productive step in scaling our innovative technology that supports this space."

Pablo Fourez, Executive Vice President, Network and Digital Payment Services, Mastercard

Nok Nok

"In times of rising card-not-present fraud and users' expectations for more convenient payment approvals, Nok Nok is pleased to collaborate with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on the new Secure Payment Confirmation (SPC) solution that addresses both of these challenges. Nok Nok already supports the new SPC solution and passkeys that streamline user authentication and enhance payment security in the latest release of the Nok Nok S3 Suite announced in April 2023."

Dr. Rolf Lindemann, Vice President, Products, Nok Nok

Worldline

"Worldline’s R&D team has always supported the W3C payments workgroup mission to combine frictionless UX with clear and strong controls. As such the Secure Payment Confirmation is a major leap forward to create an open standard that brings a clear consent to the user, a frictionless conversion rate to Merchants and continued Strong Customer Authentication control for the user's bank that remains responsible for the applied SCA. 
I'm proud that my team is an active contributor to this new proposed standard which allows to support our customers to quickly adopt these payment innovations."

Stephan Blachier, Head of Worldline Labs

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has long promoted the Consortium as a neutral forum where organizations around the world come together to create the technologies to most fully realize the potential of the web.

When the Consortium was established and running well Sir Tim was able to put his focus elsewhere and founded other organizations like the World Wide Web Foundation, the Open Data Institute London and his newest layer of the web, the Solid Protocol, and the company Inrupt bringing it to fruition. Sir Tim has gradually stepped away from being directly involved with most W3C decisions. Today, to ensure that Sir Tim’s vision continues, he retains a permanent seat on the Board of Directors and has been actively advocating and supporting the evolution of the organization he founded.

Greater means, stronger governance are fueling the need for change

Going beyond the incremental changes that over the years enabled the Web Consortium to keep pace with the web's evolving technologies and uses, the newly adopted structure affords increased transparency and accountability, and greater responsiveness to fast moving changes.

The new structure will allow continuity as well as further development of the Consortium. It also puts governance at the fore. A Board of Directors with W3C Member majority will guide the operations and strategic direction, aiming for clearer reporting, greater transparency and continued global cooperation, including with new international Partners from the former Hosts.

As required of all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, our bylaws and a number of documents will be public, such as tax documents as well as specific financial statements disclosing our operating activities, balance sheets, statement of cash flows, and income statement. Our financial statements will be annually audited by an independent external auditor.

Preserving our world-class standards development process

We will continue to use our proven standards development process.

W3C processes promote fairness and enable progress. Our standards work will still be accomplished in the open, under the W3C Process Document and royalty-free W3C Patent Policy, with input from the broader community. Decisions will still be taken by consensus. Technical direction and Recommendations will continue to require review by W3C Members – large and small. The Advisory Board will still guide the community-driven Process Document enhancement. The Technical Architecture Group will continue as the highest authority on technical matters.

Vision for the future

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.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is a public-interest non-profit organization incorporated in the United States of America, led by a Board of Directors and employing a global staff across the globe. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Press Release

Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.453.8943 (US, Eastern Time)

Testimonials from W3C members

Accessibility Foundation • Center for Democracy & Technology • ConsenSys • Deque Systems, Inc. • eyeo • Fondazione LIA • Huawei Corporation • koodos labs • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory • Ministry of Digital Affairs, Taiwan • Oracle • Tetralogical • TPGi

Accessibility Foundation

"Accessibility Foundation, member of W3C since 2001, congratulates W3C Inc with the successful transition from a hosted model to a public-interest non-profit organization. Our Foundation will continue to support W3C and W3C/WAI activities with regards to digital inclusion for persons with disabilities. W3C has a crucial role in the harmonization of accessibility in web standards, supporting materials and tools. Accessibility Foundation uses the W3C/WAI accessibility resources in their daily work and actively works together on new and revised WAI resources that support the European Accessibility Act."

Eric Velleman, Founder, Accessibility Foundation

Center for Democracy & Technology

"As a long-time civil society member of the World Wide Web Consortium, CDT is encouraged by the successful transition of W3C to a public-interest non-profit organization. Internet governance is most effective and legitimate when it is genuinely multistakeholder. To that end, CDT is committed to participating in the development of Web standards, advocating for technical designs that support privacy and other human rights, and including more of the community in the standard-setting process. There is much work to be done, by the new W3C Inc. and by the wider community, to make standard-setting inclusive and to fulfill the potential of the Web."

Alexandra Reeve Givens, President & CEO, Center for Democracy & Technology

ConsenSys

"W3C has led the evolution of the basic Web platform for almost three decades. It pioneered some of the principles of decentralisation that are central to our own vision, enabling multiple stakeholders to support and participate in the governance of a critical technology that is a public good. An early decision of ConsenSys was to be a member and participate in shaping the web as part of W3C. We are committed to extending the Internet with new mechanisms for trust, a fairer model of ownership, and more transparent and democratic economic rewards to build the digital economy of tomorrow. We welcome the transition of W3C to an independent organisation founded on strong values to continue its leadership of an open technology platform that will remain fundamental to the transformation we are working to see."

Charles Nevile, Lead Standards Architect, ConsenSys

Deque Systems, Inc.

"We're excited to see W3C evolve and continue to drive vitally important web standards forward. Myself and my colleagues at Deque have been working with W3C for 16 years on WCAG in an effort to drive digital equality across the web. As the web changes and grows, we're excited to defend the W3C vision together, building a web that works for everyone."

Glenda Sims, Chief Information Accessibility Officer, Deque Systems, Inc.

eyeo

"Eyeo is delighted to witness the establishment of W3C Inc. as a new legal entity with non-profit status. As the web needs to continuously evolve, we are facing big challenges and require sustainable standards to keep the web open, accessible and secure for everyone. eyeo will continue to actively participate in various working groups to keep the web balanced for users, content creators and advertisers."

Gertrud Kolb, Chief Technology and Product Officer (CTPO), eyeo

Fondazione LIA

“As a European organization, we fully support W3C and their efforts to create a more open, interoperable and accessible digital world. The new version of the EPUB Accessibility specification is an important step towards meeting the requirements of the European Accessibility Act for publishers. It is essential for different voices from different regions to be represented in this process and we demonstrate that organizations of all sizes can contribute to this cause. Accessibility is a critical and rapidly growing issue: we will continue to support W3C and their efforts to make the digital world more accessible for all.”

Cristina Mussinelli, Secretary General, Fondazione LIA

Huawei Corporation

"We applaud W3C successfully transformation as an independent, non-profit and member-driven legal entity after three decades of diligent operations leading to the thriving of global Web technologies, and we strongly believe W3C will take the great opportunity to continue championing standardization principles such as openness, fairness and transparency, serving W3C’s outstanding vision of ‘Web for All’. We look forward to W3C leveraging this crucial chance to unify more members, talents and sponsors, effectively addressing standards challenges triggered by emerging technologies, with the support of the Web infrastructure, as the mature, credible and evolving foundation.”

Thomas Li, President of Corporate Standards, Huawei Corporation

Koodos Labs

"For nearly three decades, W3C has stood at the forefront of the web's evolution, promoting standards and guidelines that have helped shape the internet as we know it today. At koodos labs, we're excited to be on the frontlines supporting the W3C's tireless efforts to advance the web and ensure its accessibility, interoperability, and neutrality. As the web enters an important juncture, we have no doubt that W3C Inc. will remain a key player in shaping its future."

Jad Esber, Co-founder, CEO, Koodos Labs

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

"Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory congratulates W3C on the creation of W3C Inc. as an independent legal entity. We gratefully acknowledge the work of the host institutions to manage the consortium over the past several decades. Those years have been crucial to the development of scientific data sharing and knowledge dissemination. With the Consortium's guidance, the Web has become an indispensable tool for research, not only in publishing results but also in making data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. Web standards also enable tools for scientific computing, analysis, and collaboration, all fundamental aspects of modern scientific research. We look forward to addressing the challenges of the present day and building a still brighter future."

Wahid Bhimji, Data Department Head, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Ministry of Digital Affairs, Taiwan

"As a new member to W3C, we are committed to work with all stakeholders, especially around decentralized identifiers, accessibility, privacy and security standards. We look forward to engaging in inclusive co-creation that leads to digital resilience for all — overcoming online harms through digital competence."

Audrey Tang, Minister of Digital Affairs, Ministry of Digital Affairs, Taiwan

Oracle

"W3C provides a unique and valuable opportunity for W3C members, staff, and the international community to collaborate on creating open standards in a transparent manner. As W3C transitions from a hosted model to a member-driven non-profit organization, we are excited for the potential to be more agile and accountable while adhering to the same standards processes and licenses that have been successful over the past 28 years. As a member of W3C since 1995, Oracle has been privileged to have helped in W3C’s mission to lead the web to its full potential by creating open standards. Oracle will continue its contributions and participation in W3C including its leadership in the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AGWG). Oracle values the benefits that the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have provided to improve access to the Web by anyone, regardless of their abilities, to everyone around the world."

Luke Kowalski, VP, Corporate Architecture Group, Oracle

Tetralogical

"TetraLogical welcomes this new era of the World Wide Web Consortium. The web platform has evolved and changed since W3C was first established, and now more than ever, there is a need for the community to come together to work on open and royalty-free web standards that uphold the principles of accessibility, security, privacy, and internationalisation. We are excited by the possibilities and look forward to our continuing involvement."

Léonie Watson, Founder and Director, Tetralogical

TPGi

"W3C has a long tradition of working to provide a web that supports participation by disabled people. This extends to participation by disabled people within W3C to develop the specifications and guidelines which improve accessibility. TPGi have been actively engaged for the past 15 years as Specification Editors, Working Group participants and Chairs, and we are committed and excited to actively participate in the W3C of the future."

Steve Faulkner, Chief Accessibility Officer, TPGi

Testimonials from W3C members

Avast • Block Inc. • China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) • Conexxus • ConsenSys • Danube Tech • Digital Bazaar • Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) • Fundacion CTIC Centro Tecnológico • GS1 • Identity.com • Intel Corporation • Jolocom GmbH • Mavennet Systems Inc. • MIT Open Learning • Mesur.io • Ology Newswire, Inc. • PassiveBolt Inc • Spruce Systems, Inc. • Transmute • 51Degrees

Avast

"Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are critical to ensuring a safer Web and the type of empowered consumer experiences we’re enabling at Avast. We are incredibly proud of our colleagues who have contributed so much to making this specification a reality, notably Drummond Reed (who served as a co-author and co-editor) and Brent Zundel (who co-chaired the W3C’s DID Working Group)."

Charles Walton, SVP & GM Digital Trust Services Business, Avast Software s.r.o.

Block, Inc.

"At Block, we are excited to leverage the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) specification to help build a standards-based decentralized identity layer for the Web. We believe DIDs, and associated technologies being developed in the Decentralized Identity community, will be critical in bringing about an evolution of the Web platform that equips individuals to own and control their identifiers, personal data, and every facet of their digital interactions. Block is actively developing open source packages, products, and services that incorporate DIDs in many areas to create new value and experiences for individuals and business customers."

Daniel Buchner, Head of Decentralized Identity, Block, Inc.

China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT)

"We are excited to witness this historical moment on the Decentralized Identifiers specification. We believe that the self-sovereign identity, or the decentralized digital identity is the future of the Web, and it will induce tremendous impacts not only on the way people behave on the Internet, but also on the digital economy development worldwide. In China, CAICT and our partners have been putting great effort in creating this decentralized identity ecological community for many years. We have launched the DID-oriented Blockchain infrastructure called Xinghuo BIF since 2020, and we will publish the Chinese version self-sovereign identity-decentralized digital identity and verifiable credentials book this year so that people from all industries can realize the potential power of the new technology. We wish to build more partnerships with communities from all over the world, and we are happy to share our story with the world. The new generation of the web is coming."

Jian Jin, General Director of Institute for Industry and Internet of Things, CAICT

Conexxus

"W3C Decentralized identifiers represent a huge step forward in being able to create privacy preserving systems. Coupled with W3C Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Identifiers have enabled design and standardization of an Age Verification system that meets regulatory requirements while protecting private information. Creating systems that can do both things has formerly been a challenging task, made easier with Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials. Conexxus is a long term W3C member, and is the standards body for the convenience retail sector representing 152,000 retail outlets. W3C Decentralized Identifiers have helped create an important privacy preserving standard for the TruAge program."

Gray Taylor, Executive Director, Conexxus

ConsenSys

"ConsenSys are pleased that W3C has endorsed the DID 1.0 specification as a W3C Recommendation. This is an important step toward empowering individuals to control their own identity and how it is used. 

The DID framework enables an interoperable approach to identity that can be based on different platforms, providing cross-network interoperability. We value this approach, and the ability of W3C to produce such standards to underpin the highly hetergeneous web of today, and of the future. 

At ConsenSys we have been working half a decade with this approach in the Ethereum technology stack. This can provide an ideal basis for the implementation of secure and scalable DID methods, that frees the world from relying only on very large scale providers to manage people's identity. 

We look forward to this work, along with Verifiable Credentials and other connected standards, forming an underpinning for the new future we are building where decentralised identity management and reputation systems give people more control of their online identity."

Charles "chaals" Nevile, Lead Standards Architect, ConsenSys

Danube Tech

"Like many other companies, we welcome the decision to advance DID Core 1.0 to W3C Recommendation. For Danube Tech, DIDs are more than just a technical building block and a prerequisite for other functionality such as Verifiable Credentials or DID-based authentication. For us, DIDs are a symbol of empowerment and independence. They lie at the heart of a vision that relates physical to digital identities, in a way where human rights and democratic principles are "built-into" the technical architectures. We believe DIDs are a foundation for a better Web, and we look forward to contributing to their success with our DID-based products and customer projects around the world."

Markus Sabadello, CEO, Danube Tech

Digital Bazaar

"Our work with various governments, education institutions, banks, supply chain, and the retail sector utilize W3C Decentralized Identifiers and W3C Verifiable Credentials to build next generation privacy-enhancing digital credential issuance, verification, and encrypted storage services. All of our products support W3C Verifiable Credentials and W3C Decentralized Identifiers and help reassure our customers that they are investing in a broad, competitive ecosystem of software vendors that all support these interoperable Web standards. 

From an individual's perspective, DIDs enable a simpler, safer way to store, share, update, and verify personal data using privacy-respecting identifiers under their personal control. From an enterprise perspective, decentralized technology has the potential to reverse the trends of data breaches and data theft. Companies will no longer need to spend a fortune in the expensive collection–and protection–of data that can quickly become out-of-date, incomplete, or inaccurate. Furthermore, organizations can know with greater certainty that they are interacting with an individual that has the right to use the data they are sharing rather than receiving it from a thief or illicit data broker. 

We applaud the newest global standard at the World Wide Web Consortium and look forward to new work at W3C that will enhance and further standardize consent-based data sharing standards that respect individual right to privacy."

Manu Sporny, CEO, Digital Bazaar

Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)

"ETRI, a government-affiliated research institute in South Korea, leads the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging ICTs. We are delighted that W3C has approved the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) as W3C Recommendation. The W3C Recommendation for DIDs will serve as an excellent foundation for the digital transformation and the metaverse era, where every company globally strives to understand and reach. Furthermore, recognizing the importance of DIDs, the South Korean government and companies are cooperating to gradually apply DIDs to government-led public services, such as COVID-19 vaccination certificates and mobile driver's licenses. Therefore, ETRI is confident that the approval of the W3C Recommendation for DIDs will contribute significantly to establishing a safe and convenient DIDs-based digital ecosystem."

Seungyun Lee, Director of Open Source Center, ETRI

Fundacion CTIC Centro Tecnológico

"At CTIC we believe that DIDs are an important building block towards a truly decentralised web. We will therefore help companies and public administrations to apply DIDs in ways that go beyond replicating known centralised identity management schemes."

Pablo Coca, Director for business development and operation, CTIC Centro Tecnológico

GS1

"GS1 believes that DIDs, and the closely related technologies around Verifiable Credentials, are likely to make a very substantial difference to the level of trust in the data that underpins supply chains. We therefore welcome the transition of the DID-Core to Recommendation status. We are working on a number of initiatives involving national accreditation agencies, governments and industry partners around the world and GS1 will continue to be an active member of the community developing and testing these standards at W3C."

Phil Archer, Web Solutions Director, GS1 Global Office

Identity.com

"Identity.com fully supports the advancement of DID Core 1.0 to W3C recommendation as an official web standard. Identity.com is an open-source identity verification platform offering developers a native identity layer based on the blockchain. For us, decentralized identifiers are the fundamental technology underpinning decentralized digital identities, providing the security and standards for the future of the Internet and Web3. We believe end-users should have full ownership over their identities. This standard is a positive development for the industry."

Phillip Shoemaker, CEO, Identity.com

Jolocom GmbH

"The DID-core spec becoming an official W3C recommendation is a major and long overdue milestone for the decentralized community. At Jolocom we are currently piloting a DID-based Self-sovereign Identity Wallet in a multitude of use cases and with over two dozen partners. Questions of standardization and interoperability have always been at the core of our work in these projects. It is therefore especially gratifying and exciting to witness this step towards community cohesion. We also take it as a major motivation to continue our efforts on interoperability, to keep implementing DIDs and to further contribute to W3C efforts."

Joachim Lohkamp, CEO, Jolocom GmbH

Intel Corporation

"Intel Corporation congratulates the DID Working Group on Decentralized Identifier (DID) 1.0 reaching W3C Recommendation status. 

DID provides a framework to unify and consolidate multiple evolving identity systems. Consolidating identity systems within a single framework is useful for validating the authenticity of information and preserving its integrity as it is moved and processed among cloud, edge, and client systems. This potentially increases the capabilities of the Web to connect and unify multiple sources of information. 

The continuing evolution of this work will be key to the development of new technologies in the fields of supply chain management and Internet of Things (IoT) devices and services. For example, a Birds of a Feather (BOF) discussion group at IETF Supply Chain Integrity, Transparency, and Trust (SCITT) has already highlighted DID as a useful approach in providing much needed structure for exchanging information through the supply chain, and the Web of Things (WoT) WG is planning to support DID for identifying and discovering IoT devices and metadata. 

Intel Corporation supports this work and encourages the DID Working Group to continue working towards the convergence of widely implemented and adopted standardized best practices for identity in its next charter."

Eric Siow, Web Standards and Ecosystem Strategies Director, Intel Corporation

Mavennet Systems Inc.

"Mavennet is a firm believer in the power of Decentralized Identifiers. We believe DIDs, and associated technologies are a fundamental cornerstone to building a more transparent, trusted and resilient web enabling commercial applications that were not possible before. Mavennet is actively building a number of products utilizing DIDs to augment trust, security and automation in the supply chain."

Mahmoud Alkhraishi, Director of Engineering, Mavennet Systems Inc.

Mesur.io

"Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) alongside W3C Verifiable Credentials (VCs) are enabling our customers to have confidence in the data that they capture and share in pursuit of ESG goals and regulatory requirements. These two standards provide a path to interoperability where the user is in control of their own data in a privacy preserving manner, which is critical for us in solving global problems such as biodefense, food and water security, and in combating forced and child labor."

Michael Prorock, CTO, mesur.io

MIT Open Learning

"The members of the Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC)—comprising 12 international universities—are working together to develop new digital systems for academic credentials. The DCC approach focuses on open standards, open processes, and developing open source software to ensure learner agency in the use of their digital credentials. One of the key components of these approaches is using the W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) specification so that learners and issuers can securely associate themselves with their credentials. The DCC has chosen to implement DIDs along with W3C Verifiable Credentials to enable an interoperable, verifiable, and more trustworthy exchange of digital academic credentials."

Brandon Muramatsu, Associate Director, Projects, MIT Open Learning

Ology Newswire, Inc.

"Decentralized Identifiers are an important tool to level the playing field. With DIDs, individuals and small teams enjoy the same level of cryptographic verification of identity, claims, and content that is available to the largest and most powerful governments and corporations. 

At Ology Newswire, DIDs enable digital publishers to contribute content to the public square with cryptographic provenance to enhance censorship resistance. A free WordPress plugin serves DIDs for each author on a WordPress site giving the publisher direct control over verification. 

The DID standard is flexible enough to empower not just major corporations and governments, but also individual people and small groups with something important to say or a small enterprise to build. The wide range of applicability embodies the heart and soul of open internet standards."

Christian Gribneau, CEO, Ology Newswire, Inc.

PassiveBolt Inc

"PassiveBolt is thrilled that W3C has endorsed the Decentralized Identity specification DID 1.0. As the first company developing Web 3 based physical access control solutions, we are applying decentralized identity to address problems in the security industry. Issuing credentials for people to access secure spaces currently requires property managers to centrally store PII which exposes them to security risks, regulatory risks, and high costs. PassiveBolt is pioneering a Web3 platform that eliminates regulatory and security risks by enabling property managers to provide access to their secure spaces via user-owned and controlled digital identities based on DIDs."

Kabir Maiga, CEO, PassiveBolt

Spruce Systems, Inc.

"Spruce’s mission is to let users control their data across the web, and we strongly believe that the W3C Decentralized Identifiers are critical to achieving that. DIDs increase user choice, manage complexity across trust models, and when used with adjacent specifications such as Verifiable Credentials, can form the identity layer for a user-centric Internet. We strongly support DID-Core’s transition to a Recommendation, and will continue our contributions to the community."

Wayne Chang, Co-Founder and CEO, Spruce Systems, Inc.

Transmute

"Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) enable identity holders to assert control and reputation outside of centralized authorities, which is an unprecedented win for individual and organizational autonomy across the globe. 

Transmute helps companies and governments operate more efficiently across contexts without compromising competitiveness by providing provable and secure ways of exchanging critical trade data. DIDs implemented with Verifiable Credentials (VCs) are the core technologies Transmute relies on to secure data at scale. The tremendous community effort to standardize DIDs with W3C makes this work possible and enables wide adoption of this important technology."

Karyl Fowler, CEO and Co-Founder, Transmute

51Degrees

"DID 1.0 is a fantastic demonstration of much needed decentralized innovation."

James Rosewell - CEO 51Degrees

Testimonials from the industry

Blockchain Commons • European Commission • Decentralized Identity Foundation • Diwala • Dock Labs AG • GATACA • Gimly • Identity Woman in Business • iGrant.io • The National Association of Convenience Stores • Open Credentialing Initiative • Patient Privacy Rights Foundation • Pinnacle Corporation • Spherity • Trinsic • TruAge • Trust Over IP (ToIP) Foundation • United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) • U.S. Customs and Border Protection • U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Blockchain Commons

"DIDs are at the core of our next generation of digital identity on the internet. I'm thrilled at their recognition as an international standard. However, they are just the first step. In order to ensure a compassionate digital infrastructure that protects digital human rights, we need to design DID-centric architectures that fulfill their decentralized possibilities and minimize the identities and credentials that we share. We've laid a great foundation with the DID 1.0 spec; now we need to build on it."

Christopher Allen, IETF TLS 1.0 co-editor, W3C DID spec co-author, and Principal Architect at Blockchain Commons.

European Commission

"The European Commission’s European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) team warmly welcomes the vote by the W3C to promote the W3C DID Core 1.0 specification to "Recommendation" status.

The European Commission strives to ensure that European values are at the heart of our digital transition. This notably includes ensuring trusted digital identities for all EU citizens and residents and the creation of a secure and interoperable European Digital Identity, in which digital identity and identification are in the citizens’ control.

Decentralised identifiers (DIDs) are a type of identifier that enables verifiable, decentralised digital identity. DIDs therefore contribute to creating a decentralised identity ecosystem and to build the supporting services and capabilities that will allow citizens to create, control, and use their own digital identity.

The Commission’s EBSI team looks forward to adopting the W3C DID Core 1.0 specification in the EBSI framework as a full W3C standard."

Robert Czarny, Blockchain / DLT Business Manager, Directorate-General for Informatics (DIGIT), European Commission

Decentralized Identity Foundation

"We believe DIDs will change the course of digital identity, building in portability and interoperability at the lowest possible level. DIDs are a foundation for creating a new class of products, services, and experiences that advance our digital lives, and we look forward to leveraging DIDs and other technologies developed in the community to champion a new class of user-first, self-owned digital identity systems.

DIDs are an important technical foundation for the products (such as the Universal Resolver, the Sidetree protocol, and DIDCommv2) and activities of virtually all of our members, many of whom actively contributed to the specification."

Rouven Heck, Executive Director, Decentralized Identity Foundation

Diwala

"Diwala is working in parts of the world where digital interconnectedness has some way to go. We see W3C Decentralized Identifiers as critical to build a better digital world for these countries. We see that DIDs is the foundation to achieve an evolution of the Web platform, and leapfrog countries who have yet to reach the same digital resources as the digital leading countries of this world. DIDs will help people of the web have better control of complexity. Combining this with adjacent specifications such as Verifiable Credentials will greatly increase innovation speed, innovation opportunities and data control. We support the move of DID-Core to a Recommendation, and look forward to continuing to build on it."

Snorre Lothar von Gohren Edwin, CTO, Diwala

Dock Labs AG

"Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) represent a much needed, privacy preserving innovation that enables individuals and organizations to create, own and control their online identities. This technology is a core part of the identity and credentialing solutions offered by Dock, and the W3C recommendation of the DID-Core specification is a welcome milestone that ensures that we continue to develop our technology with interoperability in mind."

Nick Lambert, CEO, Dock Labs AG

GATACA

"For the past 3 years GATACA has had its own DID method enabling us to implement successful use cases across Europe. We’re grateful to have had the support of projects like eSSIF-Lab to advance our DID technology, and look forward to continuing using these core W3C SSI mechanisms & standards to advance its adoption. Our mission to bring real-life trust to the internet in the simplest way through one single, global digital ID is guaranteed by standardised, globally recognised decentralised identifiers and verifiable credentials."

Samuel Gómez Escalante, Founder & CTO, GATACA

Gimly

"With self-sovereign identity - DIDs and VCs - we finally are able to add the identity and authentication layer that had been missing since the inception of the internet. At Gimly we are bridging the digital and physical worlds, leveraging SSI in combination with NFC capabilities of smartcards and mobile devices to bring trust and transparency back into our digital as well as physical interactions. This work has been partly funded through the Horizon 2020 Essif-lab program."

Caspar Roelofs, Founder, Gimly Projects and Partnerships

Identity Woman in Business

"I still remember that first whiteboard session for what would become Decentralized Identifiers (DID) v1.0 that I helped facilitate following the ID2020 conference in 2016. Since then, as a community steward and contributor, I have had the pleasure to watch the DID specification progress through workshoping at the Internet Identity Workshop and pre-standardization in the Credentials Community Group before spec work graduated into an official W3C working group - which I participated in as well. It is a big milestone for the community and towards the infrastructure we need to support individuals really owning and controlling the digital representations of themselves. In my new role as a Principal of a Decentralized Identity consulting firm, I look forward to helping organizations understand and implement this standard."

Kaliya Young, Identity Woman, Founder and Principal at Identity Woman in Business, W3C Invited Expert, co-founder of the Internet Identity Workshop

iGrant.io

"Decentralised Identifiers open a new world for individuals to share personal data (credentials) while protecting their privacy. One fundamental aspect of any data exchange is auditability and regulatory compliance. Through our work with NGI-Trust eSSIF-Lab, MyData and similar organisations, iGrant.io has contributed to defining and standardising data exchange agreements (did:mydata) that make every personal data transaction immutable, trustworthy and auditable. This will create new opportunities with seamless data sharing across public and private entities governed by new data regulations."

iGrant.io

The National Association of Convenience Stores

"In the Convenience Retail channel, age restricted items represent roughly 50 million transactions a day! Restricted items traditionally have been limited within a single transaction, with the age checked using a driver’s license. Regulatory scrutiny now extends to industry-wide sales of items to individuals no matter where they purchase them, and verifying age for the sale of those items using a driver's license presents a big privacy threat. Addressing this issue, NACS has created the TruAge program using W3C Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials. Working with our partner Conexxus, NACS has been able to provide a system using open standards that gives a clear “on ramp” for additional participants in the ecosystem. TruAge supports both in-store and on-line transactions, providing safe and responsible sales of age restricted goods while preserving consumer privacy.

NACS advances the role of convenience stores as positive economic, social and philanthropic contributors to the communities they serve. The U.S. convenience store industry, with more than 152,000 stores nationwide selling fuel, food and merchandise, serves 165 million customers daily—half of the U.S. population—and has sales that are 11% of total U.S. retail and foodservice sales. NACS has 1,900 retailers and 1,800 supplier members from more than 50 countries."

Brian E. Kimmel, Executive Vice President, COO and CFO, The National Association of Convenience Stores

Open Credentialing Initiative

"The members of the Open Credentialing Initiative (OCI) were thrilled to learn about the approval of W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. OCI's architecture heavily relies on this work by W3C to create solutions using DIDs and Verifiable Credentials that solve current challenges in the pharmaceutical supply chain. We see tremendous potential in leveraging this technology for further use cases and look forward to exploring the possibilities."

Bob Celeste, Facilitation, Open Credentialing Initiative

Patient Privacy Rights Foundation

"Standardized DIDs are an essential first step toward empowering individuals to engage peers, institutions and service providers without having to trade platform surveillance for convenience. A standardized digital identifier empowers the individual by reducing their switching costs among service providers and platform intermediaries. The power of individual choice and self-determination will not be realized, however, unless the protocols that incorporate identity enable delegation in order to manage the burden of choice and the anxiety of self-determination."

Adrian Gropper, CTO, Patient Privacy Rights Foundation

Pinnacle Corporation

"W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and W3C Verifiable Credentials (VCs) enabled Pinnacle to be a leader in introducing privacy-preserving digital age verification in convenience retail. By integrating this advanced technology, NACS TruAge gives our web-based Affiniti POS state of the art industry standard-based capabilities to sell restricted goods in the markets we serve.

Standards make investing in technology development safe, and quality standards make it easy. Having the technology based on a worldwide standard lends immediate credibility and bears out the inherent privacy and security promised by DIDs and VCs."

Peter Steele, Vice President of Research, Pinnacle Corporation

Spherity

"Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are a verifiable and interoperable cryptographic method of identifying users and things. With DIDs and adjacent specifications such as Verifiable Credentials, a user-centric Internet can form an identity layer that increases user choice, establishes trust, and creates a seamless user experience.

Spherity’s DID-powered solutions provide verifiable, compliance solutions for enterprise and object identity. The W3C DID spec is wired into the core of our identity SaaS solution for enterprise identity wallets, intelligent serial numbers, and process compliance, which integrates with existing ERP and tracking systems via easy-to-use APIs."

Trinsic

"The Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) specification is at the core of our efforts to solve the governance problem in the decentralized world. At Trinsic, we believe in the power of everyone to control their identity. We also believe that ecosystems should have the ability to express their solutions using a trust model that is secure, scalable, and interoperable. The W3C recommendation of the DIDs data model is a milestone that completes the required infrastructure to make this vision possible. We're honored to partner with eSSIF-Lab to develop an open source solution for Trust Registries as a solution to governance based on DIDs."

Tomislav Markovski, Cofounder and CTO at Trinsic

TruAge

"TruAge utilizes W3C Decentralized Identifiers and W3C Verifiable Credentials for its nation-wide digital age verification system in the United States. We are pleased to see the advancement of these global W3C standards, which enabled the National Association of Convenience Stores and its 1,900 retailer and 1,800 supplier members in more than 50 countries to build a next generation privacy-respecting digital age verification system. TruAge, which is based on W3C and Conexxus standards, are currently being integrated into point of sale systems that perform more than 50 million age verifications per day."

Kyle McKeen, CEO, TruAge

Trust Over IP (ToIP) Foundation

"Decentralized identifiers are one of the key building blocks of the decentralized digital trust infrastructure for which the Trust Over IP (ToIP) Foundation is defining a complete architecture. DIDs will put the power of cryptography directly into the digital wallets of every person and organization using the Internet, enabling personal information to be protected, privacy to be preserved, and trust to be established at a scale that has never been possible before."

John Jordan, Executive Director, Trust Over IP (ToIP) Foundation

United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)

"Digitalisation is a key enabler of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). The decentralised architecture of the W3C’s DID and VC standards offer important opportunities to accelerate progress towards the SDGs. Improved access to finance for micro business in developing countries, transparency of sustainable supply chains, reduced environmental impacts, and reductions in counterfeit goods are all good use cases for the application of VC/DID based solutions. The UNECE explores important factors for establishing trust in the next-generation digital world and promotes the vision of a more open, free and secure digital future for all."

United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) - United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

"US Customs and Border Protection is actively pursuing interoperability standards based on W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and W3C Verifiable Credentials (VCs) as next generation supply chain enhancements for 2023 and 2024. The standards developed by W3C will have a profound effect on the future of supply chain modernization by driving down development costs for both public and private sectors, allowing technology choice, as well as maintaining a safe and open environment for the international community."

Vincent Annunziato, Director of Business Transformation & Innovation Division, U.S. Customs and Border Protection

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) works to protect privacy and reduce vendor lock-in by ensuring open standards and demonstrable interoperability testing. "As the US government agency that initially funded the work leading up to the Decentralized Identifiers specification, we are pleased to see its ratification as a global standard,” said Anil John, Technical Director of S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program. “We have and continue to contractually obligate our vendors to adhere to open global standards, including W3C Verifiable Credentials and W3C Decentralized Identifiers, as part of our ‘Preventing Forgery & Counterfeiting of Certificates and Licenses’ workstream, and participate in open standards processes in order to ensure transparency, protect privacy, and increase global equity in technology outcomes that affect not only those in the US, but abroad as well."

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T)

Understanding the historical Hosted model

When Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee founded W3C in 1994, he created a community of peers. Web technologies were already moving so quickly that it was critical to assemble a single organization to coordinate web standards. Tim accepted the offer from MIT, who had experience with consortia, to host W3C. He required from the start that W3C have a global footprint.

Within a few years, MIT (USA), Keio University (Japan), Inria (France, transitioning to ERCIM in 2003) completed agreements to provide W3C legal hosting. We added in 2013 Beihang University (China). The four partnered administratively in a Hosted model to manage W3C Members and provide employment of the global W3C staff working under the direction of W3C’s management.

At the operational level, which is not changing, W3C Members are bound together for our technical work, united around the W3C’s mission to lead the web to its full potential by creating open standards that ensure that the web remains open, accessible, internationalized, secure, and interoperable for everyone around the globe.

Building on 28 years of expertise

Under the Hosted model we were able to make significant changes for the better: launched free and public Community Groups for pre-standardization, improved our process and patent policy, liberalized our document license, adopted living Recommendations, broadened our focus to industry, established liaisons with IETF, WHATWG, ISO.

The Web Consortium has a track record of delivering globally recognized standards, including the foundational HTML and CSS upon which the web is built. The social and economic value of what W3C and its Members have produced cannot be overstated: hundreds of open standards have powered the creation of 2 billion websites, the emergence of transformative phenomena like social media, e-commerce, video on the web, videoconferencing. W3C’s work enables people with disabilities to access the web, supports websites in languages all around the world, improves web security through strong authentication. W3C standards may be used by anyone, at no cost.

Yet, there are imperatives to elevate W3C to a level where it rises up stronger.

Greater means, stronger governance are fueling the need for change

We need a structure where we meet at a faster pace the demands of new web capabilities and address the urgent problems of the web. The W3C Team is small, bounded in size, and the Hosted model hinders rapid development and acquisition of skills in new fields.

We need to put governance at the center of the new organization to achieve clearer reporting, accountability, greater diversity and strategic direction, better global coordination. A Board of Directors will be elected with W3C Member majority. It will include seats that reflect the multi-stakeholder goals of the Web Consortium. We anticipate to continue joint work with today’s Hosts in a mutually beneficial partnership.

Preserving our world-class standards development process

As important as all these points are, they only represent a change to the shell around W3C. The proven standards development process must and will be preserved.

W3C processes promote fairness, enable progress. Our standards work will still be accomplished in the open, under the W3C Process Document and royalty-free W3C Patent Policy, with input from the broader community. Decisions will still be taken by consensus. Technical direction and Recommendations will continue to require review by W3C Members – large and small. The Advisory Board will still guide the community-driven Process Document enhancement. The Technical Architecture Group will continue as the highest authority on technical matters.

Next steps

Our transition to launch the legal entity includes concrete stages – adoption of Bylaws: filing for 501(c)(3) non-profit status; election and seating of a Board of Directors – all to transfer staff, Member contracts, and operations to the new structure.

As W3C was created to address the needs of the early web, our evolution to a public-interest non-profit is not just to continue our community effort, but to mature and grow to meet the needs of the web of the future.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Media Advisory

Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

A culmination of 25 years of work

This award for Web Fonts represents the culmination of a quarter-century of work at the Web Consortium. In 1996, just 2 years after the World Wide Web Consortium was founded, Chris Lilley, who accepted the Emmy® award for W3C, wrote a Rationale for Fonts on the Web, noting: “ a solution for Fonts on the web should be a framework, capable of supporting current and future technologies (based on content negotiation between a knowing and willing sender and recipient), and be implementable from publically available specifications.” A year later, the W3C Fonts working group released the first public draft of Web Fonts, introducing the now-familiar @font-face CSS mechanism. 

However, it would be decades of work in order to reach the point where downloadable fonts could be easily licensed and reliably used in any browser on laptops, mobile and TV. 

Downloadable fonts were not previously common on the web. W3C cleared many years of roadblocks and brought together communities of web developers, browser and font vendors to find a way forward. The new Web Fonts Working Group, established in 2009, addressed the lack of an interoperable font format and font licensing through the creation in 2012 of an industry-supported, DRM-free, open font format for the web called “WOFF” (Web Open Font Format) whose version 2 –a standard since 2018–, is deployed in all major web browsers and now powers the vast majority (80%) of sites.

Making Web Fonts on the web work for everyone

Web Fonts enable people to use fonts on demand over the web, without requiring installation in the operating system. The technology developed by the W3C Web Fonts Working Group significantly improves compression efficiency and lowers network bandwidth. The Brotli compressor used in WOFF2 is so efficient that it was also adopted into HTTP, providing benefits to the web for HTML, CSS and Javascript files as well. 

At the start of the web, using “web core” font pack was the only option and many sites looked the same. To us today, the text on some older websites look a bit drab and almost funny. Now, thanks to WOFF, we have a wide range of open, easy to use fonts which make it easier for designers and creators to express themselves, share meaning and bring greater richness and creativity to the web. 

In 2016 W3C was recognized with a Technical and Engineering Emmy® for the Timed Text Markup Language (TTML) standard that helps ensure that the needs of people with disabilities, particularly people who are deaf or hard of hearing, are addressed and in 2018 W3C received a Technical and Engineering Emmy® for worldwide media standard enabling a Full TV Experience on the Web, bringing videos to the Web with HTML5.

Try it live!

This press release comes with four alternative styles, each with the section titles in a different font. If your browser supports alternative styles, you can select them from the View → Page Style menu. Otherwise, use the button below to cycle through them. (The fonts come from the large collection at Google Fonts.)

Next style

 

Web Fonts for minority languages

A typical computer does not have fonts for all scripts. E.g., here is article 1 of the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights in Tai Khün, written in the Tai Tham script, first without Web Fonts and then with. Many browsers will not display it without Web Fonts.

ᨾᨶᩩᩔ᩼ᨴ᩠ᨦᩢᩉᩖᩣ᩠ᨿᨠᩮ᩠ᨯᩨᨾᩣᨾᩦᨻ᩠ᨦᩈᩁᩓᩢᨹ᩠ᨿ᩵ᨦᨻ᩠ᨿᨦᨠ᩠ᨶᩢ ᨶᩱᨠᩥᨲ᩠ᨲᩥᩈ᩠ᨠᩢ ᩓᩢᩈᩥᨴ᩠ᨵᩥ ᨲ᩵ᩣ᩠ᨦᨣᩳ᩶ᨣᩢᨾᩦᨾᨶᩮᩣᨵᨾ᩠ᨾ᩼ᩓᩢ ᨣ᩠ᩅᩁᨷᨭᩥᨷ᩠ᨲᩢᨲᩳ᩵ᨠ᩠ᨶᩢᨯᩢ᩠ᩅ᩠ᨿᨣ᩠ᩅᩣ᩠ᨾᨹ᩠ᨿ᩵ᨦᨻ᩠ᨿᨦᨠ᩠ᨶᩢ

 

ᨾᨶᩩᩔ᩼ᨴ᩠ᨦᩢᩉᩖᩣ᩠ᨿᨠᩮ᩠ᨯᩨᨾᩣᨾᩦᨻ᩠ᨦᩈᩁᩓᩢᨹ᩠ᨿ᩵ᨦᨻ᩠ᨿᨦᨠ᩠ᨶᩢ ᨶᩱᨠᩥᨲ᩠ᨲᩥᩈ᩠ᨠᩢ ᩓᩢᩈᩥᨴ᩠ᨵᩥ ᨲ᩵ᩣ᩠ᨦᨣᩳ᩶ᨣᩢᨾᩦᨾᨶᩮᩣᨵᨾ᩠ᨾ᩼ᩓᩢ ᨣ᩠ᩅᩁᨷᨭᩥᨷ᩠ᨲᩢᨲᩳ᩵ᨠ᩠ᨶᩢᨯᩢ᩠ᩅ᩠ᨿᨣ᩠ᩅᩣ᩠ᨾᨹ᩠ᨿ᩵ᨦᨻ᩠ᨿᨦᨠ᩠ᨶᩢ

 

Here is the same text in Sanskrit using a script called Grantha. Again first without Web Fonts and then with:

𑌸𑌰𑍍𑌵𑍇 𑌮𑌾𑌨𑌵𑌾𑌃 𑌸𑍍𑌵𑌤𑌨𑍍𑌤𑍍𑌰𑌾𑌃 𑌸𑌮𑍁𑌤𑍍𑌪𑌨𑍍𑌨𑌾𑌃 𑌵𑌰𑍍𑌤𑌨𑍍𑌤𑍇 𑌅𑌪𑌿 𑌚, 𑌗𑍌𑌰𑌵𑌦𑍃𑌶𑌾 𑌅𑌧𑌿𑌕𑌾𑌰𑌦𑍃𑌶𑌾 𑌚 𑌸𑌮𑌾𑌨𑌾𑌃 𑌏𑌵 𑌵𑌰𑍍𑌤𑌨𑍍𑌤𑍇। 𑌏𑌤𑍇 𑌸𑌰𑍍𑌵𑍇 𑌚𑍇𑌤𑌨𑌾-𑌤𑌰𑍍𑌕-𑌶𑌕𑍍𑌤𑌿𑌭𑍍𑌯𑌾𑌂 𑌸𑍁𑌸𑌮𑍍𑌪𑌨𑍍𑌨𑌾𑌃 𑌸𑌨𑍍𑌤𑌿। 𑌅𑌪𑌿 𑌚, 𑌸𑌰𑍍𑌵𑍇𑌽𑌪𑌿 𑌬𑌨𑍍𑌧𑍁𑌤𑍍𑌵-𑌭𑌾𑌵𑌨𑌯𑌾 𑌪𑌰𑌸𑍍𑌪𑌰𑌂 𑌵𑍍𑌯𑌵𑌹𑌰𑌨𑍍𑌤𑍁।

𑌸𑌰𑍍𑌵𑍇 𑌮𑌾𑌨𑌵𑌾𑌃 𑌸𑍍𑌵𑌤𑌨𑍍𑌤𑍍𑌰𑌾𑌃 𑌸𑌮𑍁𑌤𑍍𑌪𑌨𑍍𑌨𑌾𑌃 𑌵𑌰𑍍𑌤𑌨𑍍𑌤𑍇 𑌅𑌪𑌿 𑌚, 𑌗𑍌𑌰𑌵𑌦𑍃𑌶𑌾 𑌅𑌧𑌿𑌕𑌾𑌰𑌦𑍃𑌶𑌾 𑌚 𑌸𑌮𑌾𑌨𑌾𑌃 𑌏𑌵 𑌵𑌰𑍍𑌤𑌨𑍍𑌤𑍇। 𑌏𑌤𑍇 𑌸𑌰𑍍𑌵𑍇 𑌚𑍇𑌤𑌨𑌾-𑌤𑌰𑍍𑌕-𑌶𑌕𑍍𑌤𑌿𑌭𑍍𑌯𑌾𑌂 𑌸𑍁𑌸𑌮𑍍𑌪𑌨𑍍𑌨𑌾𑌃 𑌸𑌨𑍍𑌤𑌿। 𑌅𑌪𑌿 𑌚, 𑌸𑌰𑍍𑌵𑍇𑌽𑌪𑌿 𑌬𑌨𑍍𑌧𑍁𑌤𑍍𑌵-𑌭𑌾𑌵𑌨𑌯𑌾 𑌪𑌰𑌸𑍍𑌪𑌰𑌂 𑌵𑍍𑌯𑌵𑌹𑌰𑌨𑍍𑌤𑍁।

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Press Release

Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

The three-week online course introduces developers to the principles of Web Authentication, from the development of the Application Programming Interface (API), to the terminology and the technical know-how. The heart of the course teaches students how to build and deploy their own Web Authentication server.

Course aimed at raising awareness, boosting adoption

One of the pillars of the Web Authentication API is its design to eliminate phishing by using public key-based credentials to protect log-ins and access to Web resources. Credentials represent the most common initial attack target, and compromised credentials represent 20% of breaches at an average cost of $4.37 million per breach, according to IBM’s 2021 Breach Report.

The W3C’s Web Authentication Working Group advanced to W3C Recommendation in 2019 the specification “Web Authentication: An API for Accessing Public Key Credentials Level 1”. The group completed a second Recommendation version in 2021, and is currently working on a third update. A W3C Recommendation is an official web standard.

The “Introduction to Web Authentication” course is the seventh online course available on W3Cx, W3C’s online learning platform on edX. Since the initial HTML5 online course launched in 2015, over 1.3M students from around the world have enrolled in a W3Cx course.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

About Yubico

Yubico sets new global standards for simple and secure access to computers, mobile devices, servers, and internet accounts. The company’s core invention, the YubiKey, delivers strong hardware protection, with a simple touch, across any number of IT systems and online services. The YubiHSM, Yubico’s ultra-portable hardware security module, protects sensitive data stored in servers. Yubico is a leading contributor to the FIDO2, WebAuthn, and FIDO Universal 2nd Factor open authentication standards, and the company’s technology is deployed and loved by 9 of the top 10 internet brands and by millions of users in 160 countries. Founded in 2007, Yubico is privately held, with offices in Sweden, UK, Germany, USA, Australia, and Singapore. For more information: www.yubico.com.

End Press Release

W3C Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

Yubico Media Contact

Karin Muskopf, Sr. Director, Global Communications <karin.muskopf@yubico.com>

https://www.w3.org/ — 17 June 2021 — The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced today that Web Audio API is now an official standard, bringing music and audio creation and manipulation to the Web.

 

 

Web Audio API is a JavaScript API for creating, shaping, and manipulating sounds directly in a Web browser. It is already widely deployed for the creation of music and sound effects on Web pages, for the creation of online musical instruments, for Web games, and for collaborative artworks such as sound installations.

Responsive, high-quality sounds in any website, any web app

Focussed on sound creation (rather than merely the playback of recorded audio), the Web Audio API provides a rich set of modular building blocks which web and app developers can combine to create a wide range of applications, including: auditory feedback in user interfaces, musical instruments, soundtracks and effects for entertainment and gaming, teaching, spatial audio for AR and VR, online audio editing apps, crossfading and compression for in-car music management, and audio analysis and visualisation.

Web Audio is available everywhere

With the API standardized and deployed as a royalty-free feature in Web browsers and other devices and platforms, both on desktop and mobile, creating sound with the Web Audio API has become a dependable, widely deployed, built-in capability, eliminating the need to install plugins or download separate applications.

Web Audio is used in many applications including: SoundCloud, Mozilla Hubs, Firefox Mixed Reality, Ableton, Google Meet and Stadia, SoundTrap, Amped Studio, BandLab, BeatPort, Soundation, Leimma & Apotome, and Spotify.

Web-wide, multi-user experiences

In contrast to most native audio applications, the Web Audio API naturally lends itself to creation of collaborative and interactive artworks online, where instead of a passive audience, people can actively interact with the artists and each other, using nothing more than the browser on their computer or mobile phone.

The future of Web Audio API is already in the works

The W3C Web Audio Working Group has benefitted from the shared developer experience of the global Web Audio community over the last six years, exemplified by the annual Web Audio Conference series and the Web Audio weekly newsletter.

Together, the Working Group and community have already started work on Web Audio API v2. This will build on and enrich the first version of the API, adding more complex and much-requested features which were insufficiently developed to be included in the first version of the API.

Web Audio API joins the many W3C standards that define an Open Web Platform for application development with unprecedented potential to enable developers to build rich interactive experiences, that are available on any device and environment.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Press Release

Media contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

Testimonials from W3C members and Industry Users

BBC • Google • Mozilla • Spotify • Université Côte d’Azur • Web3D Consortium

BBC

The BBC has been a major contributor to the Web Audio API since the formation of the Audio working group at the W3C. To see it become a standard represents a huge effort across the industry to provide modern audio processing on the web platform. From a broadcast perspective, the WAAPI supports our aspirations to deliver personalised, accessible, immersive and interactive experiences to our audiences via our web based playback platforms in a way which was previously not possible

Andy Conroy, Controller, BBC Research & Development

Google

The Web Audio API transformed how we interact with sound in the browser by bringing advanced audio processing and musical creativity into the Web platform.

Immersive audio experiences entertain and delight after just following a link on the web. Businesses have built audio and music production tools. Games bring dynamic soundscapes. Teleconferencing & video chat tools enhance the quality of their connection. And much more richness has flourished, from online audio books to enhanced marketing experiences

Google is pleased to have supported Web Audio standardization and advocacy over this decade-long journey and thanks the many contributors along the way.

Hongchan Choi, Web Audio Technical Lead, Google

웹 오디오 API는 실시간 음향 처리 및 합성을 웹 플랫폼으로 가져옴으로써 우리가 웹 브라우저를 통해 소리를 다루는 방식을 완전히 탈바꿈시켰습니다.

웹 링크 하나로 몰입형 음향을 체험할 수 있으며, 웹 기반의 음악 제작 도구들은 음악 교육을 변화시키고 있습니다. 또한, 웹 오디오 API는 동적인 게임 음향의 구현과 화상회의 음성 품질의 향상을 위해 사용되고 있습니다. 더 나아가 온라인 오디오 북과 멀티미디어를 이용한 마케팅에 이르기까지 더욱 풍부해진 웹 경험을 제공합니다.

구글은 지난 10여 년 동안 웹 오디오 표준화 과정을 끊임없이 지원해 왔습니다. 오늘 이 뜻깊은 이정표를 축하하며 그 긴 여정에 이바지 한 모든 이들에게 감사드립니다.

Hongchan Choi, Web Audio Technical Lead, Google

Mozilla

Eleven years ago Mozilla pioneered the first experimental implementations of real-time audio processing in web browsers. We've been innovating in this domain ever since, and we are very pleased to see the Web Audio API become a W3C Recommendation.

With the addition of AudioWorklet’s direct audio sample manipulation, the Web Audio API is now a viable foundation for a broad range of use-cases and applications. Existing native code bases or highly custom processing algorithms can now be deployed on the Web to build fully-featured digital audio workstations, state-of-the-art VR experiences, or even physical modelling of acoustic instruments, delivering on the vision of our early experiments and building a better internet.

Paul Adenot, Mozilla

Soundtrap, Spotify

For nearly ten years Soundtrap has been working to democratize music creation and the Web Audio API has been at the core of our product since the beginning. Our goal has always been to make music and storytelling more accessible and collaborative, and Web Audio has been key to removing the barriers of installed desktop software and making audio production available to anyone with a web browser. We are proud to be a part of the Web Audio community and are excited to now see Web Audio recognized as the official W3C standard for audio on the web.

Björn Melinder, Senior Staff Engineer, Soundtrap, Spotify

Université Côte d’Azur

Université Côte d'Azur (France) joined the W3C Audio Working Group in 2013. Today, we are happy to see the WebAudio API become an official standard. We have successfully used the WebAudio technology in our teaching and we have participated with other academic actors in the creation of the research domain of the same name. Some of the software developed by our scientists, based on WebAudio, is now marketed by the CNRS and has won prestigious awards at international conferences.

No one could have predicted the rapid transition to the online world that is now part of our daily lives. The work done on WebAudio over the past decade has put the Web platform in a central position to change the world of music and multimedia, enabling it to adapt to this new way of living and working.

Michel Buffa, Professor at the University of Côte d’Azur

Université Côte d’Azur (France) a rejoint en 2013 l’Audio Working Group du W3C. Aujourd'hui, nous sommes heureux de voir la WebAudio API devenir une norme officielle. Nous avons utilisé avec succès la technologie WebAudio dans nos enseignements et nous avons participé avec d’autres acteurs du monde académique à la création du domaine de recherche du même nom. Certains logiciels développés par nos scientifiques, basés sur WebAudio, sont aujourd’hui commercialisés par le CNRS et ont obtenu des prix prestigieux dans des conférences internationales.

Personne n’aurait pu prédire la fulgurante transition vers le monde en ligne qui fait désormais partie de notre quotidien. Les travaux effectués sur WebAudio au cours de la dernière décennie placent aujourd’hui la plate-forme Web dans une position centrale pour modifier le monde de la musique et du multimédia, en lui permettant de s'adapter à cette nouvelle façon de vivre et de travailler.

Michel Buffa, Maître de Conférence à l’Université Côte d’Azur

Web3D Consortium

Extensible 3D (X3D) Graphics is the royalty-free open standard for publishing, viewing, printing and archiving interactive 3D models on the Web.

The W3C Web Audio API is unique and fundamentally important for adding high-fidelity audio processing in a performant cross-platform manner for the Web.

X3D version 4 fully integrates all capabilities in the W3C Web Audio API as a declarative audio graph, within X3D scene graphs, for processing and synthesizing audio in spatialized Web applications.

Open-source implementations and examples repeatably demonstrate how compelling audio capabilities improve 3D interaction, realism and presence on the Web.

Live audio-video communication systems in any website, any web app

The WebRTC framework provides the building blocks from which web and app developers can seamlessly add video chat to a range of applications, including tele-education and tele-health, entertainment and gaming, professional and workformce collaboration.

With the foundations standardized and deployed as a royalty-free feature in Web browsers and other devices and platforms, setting up a secure audio-video communication system with WebRTC has become a built-in capability, eliminating the need to install plugins or download separate applications.

WebRTC is massively deployed as a communications platform and powers video conferences and collaboration systems across all major browsers, both on desktop and mobile. Billions of users can interact now that WebRTC makes live video chat easier than ever on the Web. And from startups to Web-scale companies, in commercial products and open source projects, WebRTC has vastly expanded the ability to deploy real-time interaction solutions to customers and users.

Real-world positive and timely impact

The year 2020 has shown both how critical WebRTC already is in a world where travel and physical contacts need to be limited, as well as the many improvements that can be brought to the technology to address new usages that have emerged.

Businesses and households are relying on WebRTC for a wealth of operations, increasing its adoption. Organizations are leveraging WebRTC to conduct training, interviews, strategic planning or as a substitute for in-person meetings to keep connected through happy hour and other social interactions - it is replacing not only in-person meetings, but it is now also replacing the human interactions inside offices. Domains such as healthcare and defense use WebRTC for training. Schools and universities have shifted to virtual learning platforms. Cloud gaming and social networks use live streaming and interactive broadcasts. Entertainment is trying to figure out how to bring the audience back to the studios by doing it remotely. Sports are trying to recreate the in-stadium experience using WebRTC. Families and friends make daily use of products that are built with WebRTC or parts of it.

The future of WebRTC is already in the works

With the use of WebRTC expanding beyond the initial core design to power video conferences and collaboration systems in web browsers and other ecosystems (e.g., native apps), more features and more optimizations are now needed.

There is already work underway in the IETF WebTransport (WEBTRANS) and WebRTC Ingest Signaling over HTTPS (WISH) working groups that will build on, coordinate with and extend efforts of other IETF working groups. These include QUIC, to defin new protocols that support the development of the WebTransport API, and HTTPBIS, to specify a simple, extensible, HTTPS-based signaling protocol to establish one-way WebRTC-based audiovisual sessions between broadcasting tools and real-time media broadcast networks.

The W3C WebRTC Working Group has started work on WebRTC Next Version Use Cases to map out WebRTC's future, notably:

• End-to-end encryption in server-mediated videoconferencing
• Live processing of audio and video feeds, including via Machine Learning
• Internet of Things (e.g., an IoT sensor maintains a long-term connection and seeks to minimize power consumption)

The WebRTC Working Group is iterating on existing and new use cases, with a focus on understanding the full range of the needs and their priority. W3C recently started work on WebTransport and Web Codecs, which promises to bring the benefits of low-latency streaming to the broader media and entertainment ecosystem.

WebRTC joins the many W3C standards that define an Open Web Platform for application development with unprecedented potential to enable developers to build rich interactive experiences, powered by vast data stores, that are available on any device and environment.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy. For its work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award. And for its work to standardize a Full TV Experience on the Web, W3C received a 2019 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

About the Internet Engineering Task Force

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the Internet's premier technical standards body, gathering a large, international community of network designers, engineers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. For more information, see: https://www.ietf.org/

End Press Release

Media Contacts

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1-617-253-5628 (US, Eastern Time)

Greg Wood <ghwood@ietf.org>
+1-703-625-3917 (US, Eastern Time)

Support for WebRTC from W3C Members and the industry

Agora.io • China Mobile • Cisco • Ericsson • Google • Intel Corporation • Mozilla • NTT Communications • Peer5 • |pipe| • Shanghai Bilibili Technology Co., Ltd. • Tencent Games

Agora.io

Ten years ago, WebRTC ushered in a new era promising the democratization of real-time audio/video communications. By breaking this capability free from the confines of hardware endpoints and moving it into the browser, WebRTC started us down the path of real-time engagement (RTE) for all.

As a company whose core mission is to make our novel RTE technology ubiquitous around the world, this is a particularly memorable moment for us at Agora. We are proud to stand alongside W3C on this groundbreaking day to recognize WebRTC as the web standard.

Edward Brakus, Senior VP, Product & Product Marketing, Agora.io

China Mobile

WebRTC provides the basis of quick implementation of audio and video communication services. The W3C efforts greatly improve the compatibility and interoperability for the product teams in development and deployment. Today, we are looking forward to the enhancement and extension in the WebRTC NV, including PeerConnection, Media Capture and others, from which the web developer community can benefit. We will promote the vigorous development of the web ecosystem with the new release.

Song XU, Technical Director, China Mobile - Migu

WebRTC提供了音视频和和通讯的基础实现，而经过W3C 标准化的该技术，让很多企业开发团队在实施和部署时候具有极大兼容性 和高效性。今天我们非常期待WebRTC NV新版本中的增强扩展，包括 PeerConnection、Media Capture等新内容中得到受益，并一起推进Web生 态系统的蓬勃发展。

徐嵩 技术总监 中国移动 咪咕公司

Cisco

The creation of the WebRTC standards and their implementation across all major browsers provides developers with a common set of protocols to add video conferencing to a range of applications. By enabling easy deployment for all web conferencing applications including Webex, we can connect people globally, empowering richer and more inclusive experiences.

Cullen Jennings, CTO for Security and Applications, Cisco

Ericsson

Ericsson has been a main contributor to the WebRTC specifications in W3C and IETF since the first discussions started in the industry. Today we are pleased to see it become an official standard. We have successfully used WebRTC in several commercial solutions, and we have also contributed to including key elements of WebRTC in 3GPP standards to enable a richer 5G voice service in the future with interactive calling. WebRTC plays an important role in aligning user experience and improving interoperability of rich collaboration services to provide better communication capabilities for people, which is more important than ever.

Mikael Prytz, Research Director, Ericsson

Google

As one of the longstanding drivers behind WebRTC, Google is pleased and proud to see the recognition of WebRTC as a universal and open standard for real time communication. The WebRTC W3C standard, the support from Google’s open source implementation and free-to-use technologies such as the VP8 video codec, have all formed the basis of a thriving and growing ecosystem of companies and services. At Google, WebRTC is fundamental to a great number of products and services including Google Duo, Google Meet and Stadia. We applaud the contributions from volunteers and industry stakeholders that have contributed to making this milestone possible and share this moment with them.

Tomas Gunnarsson, WebRTC engineering lead, Google

WebRTC has grown into a thriving ecosystem of applications and services, thanks to the web and the innovation enabled by open standards and open source. We’re especially proud of the role WebRTC has played during the COVID-19 pandemic in keeping people connected through video communications, as well as the emergence of new domains like cloud gaming. It’s been a rewarding journey, and we’re thankful for all the individuals and organizations across the industry who have contributed to making this milestone possible.

Justin Uberti, Distinguished Engineer, Google

Intel Corporation

Intel is pleased to support the WebRTC 1.0 standard reaching W3C Recommendation status, a major accomplishment from all the working group participants. As a strong WebRTC advocate, Intel contributes to the WebRTC ecosystem with its holistic hardware and software expertise and perspective to help enable unified real-time communication experiences across devices, operating systems, and browsers. Intel-sponsored Open WebRTC Toolkit open-source project and its Intel Collaboration Suite for WebRTC distribution have helped businesses build end-to-end real-time communication platforms across domains, from video conferencing to remote education and interactive live streaming.

Mark Skarpness, General Manager and Vice President, System Software Engineering, Intel Corporation

Mozilla

Video conferencing is a critically important method of communication, especially right now and WebRTC brings it to everyone instantly using only their Web browser. It’s a powerful demonstration of the true power of the Web.

Eric Rescorla, CTO, Mozilla

NTT Communications

It’s an exciting announcement that WebRTC 1.0 reaches the Recommendation stage. We are proud of one of the contributors to the WebRTC community and business. WebRTC is the game changer of Web, it brings us the real-time scenario to the ecosystem. With the horrific virus, people rapidly changed into remote communication. Though it was dramatical changes, we can smoothly keep up with since there was WebRTC already. I believe this movement will be moving forward. After WebRTC 1.0, new specs will keep realizing a more fantastic and brilliant world. We promise to keep contributing to these great activities.

Kensaku Komatsu, Principal Engineer, NTT Communications Innovation Center

Peer5

In 2012, upon hearing of the upcoming WebRTC spec, Peer5's founders were inspired to create a platform based on WebRTC from the ground up. Ever since, Peer5 has been a vocal and proactive advocate of WebRTC and is delighted that it has finally consolidated its official status as an internationally recognized standard. The community has been fundamental in achieving our shared vision of WebRTC's potential to enable and advance applications such as P2P networking.

Shachar Zohar, CTO & Co-founder, Peer5

|pipe|

I’m delighted to see WebRTC become an official W3C Recommendation. At |pipe| we see tremendous opportunities for WebRTC beyond regular video conferencing between people. Instead we’re applying it to the Internet of Things: bringing simplicity, security and data privacy to small connected devices (baby monitors, IP cameras, drones, etc.).

Licensed as an SDK/API to device developers and OEMs, |pipe| is a small WebRTC implementation with a simple way to claim/lend devices securely to any smartphone browser, without passwords. There are already tens of thousands of small camera devices in the field secured by our implementation of the WebRTC standard.

WebRTC devient officiellement une W3C Recommendation, et j’en suis ravi. |pipe| voit d’importantes opportunités pour le WebRTC, au-delà des vidéoconférences régulières entre les personnes. Au lieu de cela, nous l'appliquons à l'Internet des objets (IoD-IoT), apportant simplicité, sécurité et confidentialité des données aux petits appareils connectés (babyphones, caméras IP, drones, etc.).

Vendue sous la forme de SDK/API auprès de développeurs d'appareils et d’OEMs, |pipe| est une petite implémentation WebRTC qui dispose d’un moyen simple pour s’approprier/se prêter des appareils en toute sécurité, et ce sur n'importe quel navigateur de smartphone, sans mot de passe. Il existe déjà en utilisation des dizaines de milliers de petits appareils incluant un dispositif vidéo, sécurisés par notre implémentation de la norme WebRTC.

Tim Panton, Founder/CTO, pi.pe GmbH

Shanghai Bilibili Technology Co., Ltd.

WebRTC helps to solve many technical bottlenecks of point-to-point communication in the low-latency scenarios. It has brought in great opportunities to us Tech companies, especially contributed a lot to the rapid development in Bilibili. In the extremely difficult period of 2020-2021, I am very glad to see the official recommendation of WebRTC be released. We firmly believe that WebRTC will soon become the necessary infrastructure of the Internet and will play an important role in the innovation of streaming media technology, adding benefit to all walks of life.

Zhaoxin Tan, Technical Manager, Bilibili Inc.

Tencent Games

We’re pleased to see the Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) becomes a W3C Recommendation. The introduction of the WebRTC greatly enhances the capabilities of web applications and enables the possibilities for new promising applications such as cloud gaming which runs directly on the remote servers and can greatly reduce the hardware requirements and costs for users with configuration-free, download-free gaming experiences.

We hope that WebRTC will extensively and flexibly support the characteristics of cloud gaming, including high bandwidth, high frame rate, low latency, and high-frequency interactions and in that case will reach its full potential for interactive entertainment.

Hyton DENG, General Manager of R&D Department, Tencent Games

End Press Release

Notes to Editors:

EMV® is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries and an unregistered trademark elsewhere. The EMV trademark is owned by EMVCo, LLC.

About EMVCo

EMVCo is the global technical body that facilitates the worldwide interoperability and acceptance of secure payment transactions by managing and evolving the EMV Specifications and related testing processes. EMV is a technology toolbox that enables globally interoperable secure payments across face-to-face and remote environments. Adoption of EMV Specifications and associated approval and certification processes promotes a unified international payments framework, which supports an advancing range of payment methods, technologies and acceptance environments. The specifications are available royalty free, designed to be flexible, and can be adapted regionally to meet national payment requirements and accommodate local regulations.

EMVCo is collectively owned by American Express, Discover, JCB, Mastercard, UnionPay and Visa, and focuses on the technical advancement of the EMV Specifications. To provide all payment stakeholders with a platform to engage in its strategic and technical direction, EMVCo operates an Associates Programme and encourages all interested parties to get involved.

For further information: www.emvco.com │ EMV® Insights │ LinkedIn │ Twitter │ An Introduction to EMVCo │ YouTube

About the FIDO Alliance

The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, fidoalliance.org, was formed in July 2012 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication technologies, and remedy the problems users face with creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords. The FIDO Alliance is changing the nature of authentication with standards for simpler, stronger authentication that define an open, scalable, interoperable set of mechanisms that reduce reliance on passwords. FIDO authentication is stronger, private, and easier to use when authenticating to online services.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy. For its work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award. And for its work to standardize a Full TV Experience on the Web, W3C received a 2019 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. Organizationally, W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

EMVCo PR Contacts

Dave Amos / Chloe Smith
<david@iseepr.co.uk> / <chloe@iseepr.co.uk>
+44 1943 468007

FIDO Alliance PR Contacts

Karen Arena, Aircover PR
<press@fidoalliance.org>
+1 732-407-8510

W3C PR Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator
<w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

By design, the group will begin work with broad scope of discussion. Over time the group will prioritize from these and other topics:

• Web checkout experiences, including the value merchants should gain with W3C's Web payments standards;
• Balancing the needs of accessibility, internationalization, privacy, authentication and user friction in e-commerce;
• Emerging regulatory requirements and ensuring good customer experience;
• The evolution of Web advertising;
• Good practices for reducing online fraud;
• Enhancements to transaction integrity and assurance;
• Customer interaction, capture and retention via accessible immersive Web experiences.
• Improving mobile web commerce experiences.

Scope of Activity

The Merchant Business Group charter describes the group's activities, including:

• Education about Web technology trends and the impact on merchants, including through discussions with other W3C groups. These activities will include non-technical briefings.
• Identification of current merchant challenges, best practices for addressing them, and how those practices may change for various reasons (e.g., due to evolving privacy practices).
• Communication of merchant use cases and requirements to groups within and outside W3C.
• Coordinating reviews of the work of other W3C groups (e.g., the Web Payments Working Group, Web Authentication Working Group or Immersive Web Working Group).

Join the Merchant Business Group

Although the Merchant Business Group is focused on merchant needs, merchants and non-merchants alike —from around the globe— are invited to join.

A W3C Business Group gives innovators wanting to have an impact on the development of the Web in the near-term, a vendor-neutral forum for collaborating with like-minded stakeholders, including W3C Members and non-Members (who can participate in the Business Group without full W3C Membership).

For more information, including joining, please see the Merchant Business Group homepage.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy. For its work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award. And for its work to standardize a Full TV Experience on the Web, W3C received a 2019 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Press Release

Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

Keeping the promise to enhance interoperability and counter fragmentation in IoT

With the diversity of technologies used in Internet of Things (IoT), such as protocols and data models, information technology users are increasingly facing high integration and maintenance costs in IoT projects as well as the need to avoid isolated silos that often leave them stuck with obsolete software and falling behind in innovation. The W3C Web of Things keeps the promise to counter the fragmentation of the Internet of Things by defining a Web-based abstraction layer for existing platforms, devices, gateways and services. By complementing existing standards, it enhances interoperability thereby reducing the risk for investors and customers. This will also enable the rapid growth of open markets for devices and services.

These solutions are already deployed in products today

The Web of Things is applicable to multiple IoT domains, including Smart Home, Industrial, Smart City, Retail, and Health applications, where usage of the W3C WoT standards can simplify the development of IoT systems that combine devices from multiple vendors and ecosystems.

One of the key components of how the W3C membership builds standards is by implementing the standards as they are being built. This has resulted in the WoT Technologies being available today in a number of solutions from our Members and others in the technology industry.

• Siemens Desigo CC, their flagship Building Management Station uses WoT to help easily integrate datapoints and functions from different IoT systems into the Desigo CC management station and from there to cloud systems;
• The Eclipse Thingweb node-wot is a reference implementation (in Node.js) of the WoT standards and used as baseline for many other implementations and WoT-based projects (including proof of concept projects for Smart Cities and Retail);
• Node-RED, the well-known low-code development tool from the OpenJS Foundation, supports the WoT Thing Description as part of the Node Generator project to simplify the development of Node-RED nodes, which started as a contribution by Hitachi as part of their W3C WoT participation;
• Mozilla WebThings is an open platform based on WoT to develop privacy and security based smart home applications;
• Fujitsu offers WoT-compliant edge and cloud proxy (a software product), which can connect different IoT devices locally and aggregate them with a single interface to build large-scale systems on the cloud;
• Further WoT runtime implementations are WoTPy (in Python) and SANE Web of Things Servient (in Java).

Our Members tell their own stories the best in the testimonials below.

What does the future hold?

Two baseline specifications have been developed since the launch of the Web of Things Working Group to define an abstract architecture, a common data format for describing IoT devices and services, and several building blocks that increase interoperability for IoT applications and reduce integration efforts and costs:

• The WoT Architecture describes the overall Web of Things conceptual framework.
• The WoT Thing Description is to the Internet of Things what index.html is to a website: it can be considered as the entry point of a physical or virtual Thing/device.

The work is far from over! W3C having recently renewed the WoT Working Group charter for the second generation of Web of Things, is continuing to expand the scope and depth of the work in this area. By example, the group plans to cover minimum-effort onboarding of Things in a secure way; interoperability profiles for support of particular usage contexts and specific technologies; vocabulary support for new protocols and additional standard metadata such as location or device manufacturer; security schemes to support constantly evolving security mechanisms such as flows in OAuth2, support for PoP Tokens, support for ACE among others; links relation type specification to maximize interoperability; standardized discovery mechanisms so that devices self-describe directly rather than depending on a centralized infrastructure; and improvements to Thing Description Templates.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy. For its work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award. And for its work to standardize a Full TV Experience on the Web, W3C received a 2019 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Press Release

Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

Testimonials from W3C members

Conexxus • Fujitsu • Hitachi • Intel • Internet Research Institute • Oracle • Panasonic • Siemens • Singapore

Conexxus

Over the past couple of years, operators in the Convenience Retail Industry have come to a realization: “data” may be a more important asset than “location.” Existing, purpose-built data streams (such as transaction logs) exclude important contextual data, and while IoT data could help fill this gap, operators face big integration challenges in the absence of standards. The lack of standards for defining IoT data also makes it difficult for operators to propose definitions tailored to their needs. Web of Things promises to solve both the integration and the definition problems for retail operators. Conexxus, as the standards organization for Convenience Retail, endorses the Web of Things work and has already begun to use “Thing Descriptions” in current committees. Thanks to W3C for supporting this forward-looking work.

David Ezell, Director of New Initiatives, Conexxus

Fujitsu

The interoperability, the WoT standard trying to solve, remains the biggest challenge in IoT. The newly defined Web interface in WoT not only provides unified control over a various IoT devices, but also enables integration with many business systems using Web technologies. In addition, Metadata describing the device functions and Protocol Binding mapping to the device interfaces can also be applied to new communications technologies such as 5G, which are expected to become widespread in the future. Fujitsu believe that WoT is an indispensable technology and will have a significant impact on the digitization of our customers' systems.

Shingo Mizuno, Senior Vice President, Fujitsu Limited

Hitachi

We are pleased to see that "Web of Things" which connects a diverse range of IoT systems through Web technology has now been released as a W3C recommendation. Progress in IoT is driving an accelerated rate of data generated by business and society. Delivering appropriate feedback to the field using this data will lead to the creation of new value. We hope that “Web of Things” will make it easier to access insights and on-site equipment from across a wide range of operations and industry sectors, and enable the agile creation of new value for future society.

Norihiro Suzuki, Vice President & Executive Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Hitachi, Ltd.

Intel

This new WoT Standard takes a step forward in addressing the fundamental problem holding back the commercial success of IOT: the challenge of connecting different systems and domains. It provides a solution to enable different systems and domains to communicate and share data.

Eric Siow, Intel Corporation

Internet Research Institute

Internet Research Institute, Inc. welcomes the successful launch of advisories of ‘Web of Things Architecture’ and ‘Web of Things Thing Description’ by W3C. The Internet has been taking on a role to connect people to people with organizations through Web Technology. Accordingly, due to the spread of the IoT Technology, the Web Technology has found itself a new role of connecting various things to the Internet. It means, people, things and organization can now freely exchange information and data through the Web Technology. Furthermore, as 5G services spread, it is easy to imagine the combination of IoT Technology and Web Technology can lead us towards a prosperous future.

In fact, there are various protocols for IoT Technology exists today in the world, but unfortunately the interoperability of information and data exchange in between people and things, organization and things, things and things, are not being realized. In this situation, we are certain that ‘Web of Things Architecture’ and ‘Web of Things Thing Description’ will become the solution for this matter.

We are at the age of seeing out the preceding era of Internet that mainly connects people and seeing in an era of its connecting things. Therefore we strongly believe that WoT Technology could take a important role to develop a wide variety of the Internet services. In the future, we intend to proactively implement the development of services using WoT Technology.

Hiroshi Fujiwara, CEO, Internet Research Institute, Inc.

Oracle

Lack of interoperability standards and a highly fragmented ecosystem full of proprietary interfaces have been major hurdles for enterprise adoption of IoT technologies. These issue have been compounded by the wide range of proprietary data formats and connectivity protocols that are used across many different industries, making it very difficult to build IoT platforms that can be quickly extended for a large range of use cases. At Oracle we are thrilled that W3C Web of Things is addressing these issues head-on with the W3C Web of Things Specifications. Open standards have always opened up closed markets and driven rapid technology adoption. We firmly believe that this IoT ecosystem and the W3C Web of Things community will play a major role in bringing IoT technologies mainstream, and become a catalyst for a number of innovations benefitting a wide range of industries.

Jai Suri, Senior Director, Internet of Things Cloud, Oracle

Panasonic

Panasonic is delighted with the publication of the Web of Things Recommendations. Our company has been involved in Web of Things activities since the first Web of Things Workshop in 2014 and has contributed to the formulation of the Recommendation through technical proposals and Plugfest. Panasonic is now transforming itself into a company that achieves “Lifestyle Updates”. We believe that the Web of Things will be one of important technologies contributing to this transformation.

Yoshiyuki Miyabe, Senior Managing Executive Officer and CTO, Panasonic Corporation

Siemens

The new WoT standard enables Siemens to better combine and analyze data from different systems and domains in a very simple yet meaningful way. We use WoT e.g. to integrate devices and subsystems into our flagship building management station Desigo CC and from there to the cloud. Heterogenous and proprietary OT and IoT solutions caused in the past significant engineering and maintenance effort, e.g. if you wanted to analyze holistically data from different sources in a building. Using WoT we can quickly integrate data from different devices into a data pool and use that pool for further value creation, e.g. analytics, engineering, validation, energy optimization.

Helmut Macht, Chief Technology Officer, Siemens

Singapore

The Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech Singapore) welcomes the rollout of the WoT Architecture and Thing Description recommendations. We are hopeful that these recommendations will help to promote the development of an open, interoperable and standardised IoT ecosystem globally. This will not just benefit private enterprises operating in the smart technologies space, but public sector agencies that are looking to maximise IoT and its potential for their citizens.

Lim Chinn Hwa, Senior Director, GovTech Singapore’s Smart Nation Platform Solutions

Studio 24 have always believed in building a better web, using standards to make sure the sites they build are accessible to all regardless of who you are, what internet access you have, what device you’re using, or any disability you may have. Their own Accessibility Lead Developer will help move this forward. In this regard Studio 24’s beliefs are perfectly aligned to W3C’s mission in making a ‘Web for All’. One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.

https://www.w3.org/ — 10 December 2019 — The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced today that CSS Writing Modes Level 3 is now an official web standard, enabling text on the Web to be laid out horizontally or vertically, as well as setting the direction in which lines are stacked.

CSS support of a wide range of written languages

CSS Writing Modes Level 3 is a specification that defines CSS support for various international writing modes, including horizontal left-to-right text (such as in English or Hindi), horizontal right-to-left text (such as Hebrew or Arabic), and vertically set text (such as for Japanese or Mongolian). It also specifies how to support combinations of the above, such as bidirectional mixtures of Arabic and English text, or English or Hebrew in vertically set Asian text.

These new CSS features allow a mixture of horizontal and vertical text regions on the same page. The specification also adds support for such things as isolation in bidirectional text, glyph orientation controls, and short, inline horizontal runs in lines of vertical text. Vertical text supports line stacking from right to left (as needed for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), as well as from left to right (as is needed for Mongolian).

Local experts and community impact the entire web platform

The publication of this Recommendation is a testament to the power of local communities to shape the Web so that it responds to their needs.

In addition to contributions from experts around the world, the engagement from local experts, particularly from Japan, and support from the local community was crucially important in researching, specifying and implementing the needed features. The involvement of local communities is essential to convince browser makers to expand their features, so that the World Wide Web is usable worldwide.

W3C is actively seeking feedback and support from communities around the world to meet local needs for language support. The language matrix captures an overview of where work is needed.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy. For its work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award. And for its work to standardize a Full TV Experience on the Web, W3C received a 2019 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Press Release

Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

Testimonials from W3C members

BPS • JEPA • Kodansha • Shueisha • Yahoo Japan Corporation

BPS

The Web is undoubtedly a global platform which interconnects information and people of various counties, as is also the reason why implementing more languages, and more importantly its culture, has become an increasingly important topic. As W3C member from Japan, as well as a software company developing web-based eBook solutions for the domestic audience, we are both proud and delighted to be involved with the Writing Modes specification especially for but not limited to, including vertical text and other native typographic features for users from Japan, Taiwan, and Mongolia. We look forward to the future in which the Writing Mode helps spread recognition and consideration of expressions from all languages on the World Wide Web.

Hiroshi Sakakibara, Board Director, BPS Co., Ltd.

JEPA

During the dawn of the Japanese ebook business, the lack of vertical writing in the Open Web Platform was a serious hazard. Fortunately, CSS Writing Modes started at the last minute. Without the help of W3C, the Japanese e-book business could not have prospered.

MURATA Makoto, Then-leader of the internationalization subgroup of the IDPF EPUB WG, Japan Electronic Publishing Association CTO

日本の電子書籍ビジネスの黎明期において、OWPに縦書きがないことは深刻な障害でした。幸いなことに、ぎりぎりのタイミングでCSS Writing Modesが始まりました。W3Cの援助なしには、日本の電子書籍ビジネスの繁栄はあり得なかったのです。

村田　真、 IDPF EPUB WGの国際化サブグループの当時のリーダー 、一般社団法人 日本電子出版協会 CTO

Kodansha

Shueisha

Yahoo Japan Corporation

Yahoo Japan Corporation welcomes W3C’s recommendation of Writing Modes Level 3. Vertical writing is part of Japanese traditional culture and the recommendation of this specification is big news for the Internet in Japan. We believe that this will allow us to enhance the usability of our services.

Writing Modes Level 3 is an excellent example of W3C’s activities that respect the cultures of each country and at the same time pursue increased usability. We are certain that these activities will continue in W3C, and that they will make people’s lives more convenient around the world.

Chiaki Fujimon, Director, EVP, Managing Corporate Officer, CTO, Yahoo Japan Corporation

https://www.w3.org/ — 5 December 2019 — The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced today that the WebAssembly Core Specification is now an official web standard, launching a powerful new language for the Web. WebAssembly is a safe, portable, low-level format designed for efficient execution and compact representation of code on modern processors including in a web browser.

 

High-performance applications relying on a low-level infrastructure

At its core, WebAssembly is a virtual instruction set architecture that enables high-performance applications on the Web, and can be employed in many other environments. There are multiple implementations of WebAssembly, including browsers and stand-alone systems. WebAssembly can be used for applications like video and audio codecs, graphics and 3D, multi-media and games, cryptographic computations or portable language implementations.

WebAssembly enhances Web Performance

WebAssembly improves Web performance and power consumption by being a virtual machine and execution environment enabling loaded pages to run as native compiled code. In other words, WebAssembly enables near-native performance, optimized load time, and perhaps most importantly, a compilation target for existing code bases.

Despite a small number of native types, much of the performance increase relative to JavaScript derives from its use of consistent typing. WebAssembly leverages decades of optimization for compiled languages and its byte code is optimized for compactness and streaming. A web page can start executing while the rest of the code downloads. Network and API access occurs through accompanying JavaScript libraries. The security model is identical to that of JavaScript.

Future versions already in the works

The WebAssembly Working Group and the companion Community Group, where requirements gathering and language development take place, are already working on a range of features for future versions of the standard, including:

Threading

Threads provide the benefits of shared-memory multi-threading and atomic memory accesses.

Fixed-width SIMD

Vector operations that execute loops in parallel.

Reference types

Allow WebAssembly code to directly reference host objects.

Tail calls

Enable calling functions without using extra stack space.

ECMAScript module integration

Interact with JavaScript by loading WebAssembly executables as ES6 modules.

There are many other longer-term projects including several aimed at improving the usability and availability of WebAssembly. For example garbage collection, debugging interfaces, and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI), which is a set of modules for low-level system functionality such as file and network access.

WebAssembly joins the many W3C standards that define an Open Web Platform for application development with unprecedented potential to enable developers to build powerful, interactive experiences that are available on any device.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society, in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security, and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in areas such as entertainment, communications, digital publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent Policy. For our work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award. And for its work to standardize a Full TV Experience on the Web, W3C received a 2019 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Press Release

Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

Testimonials from W3C members

360 • Alibaba Group • Agora.io • Baidu • Huawei • Tencent • Xiaomi

360

"WebAssembly 规范的推出，进一步拓展了 Web 技术的应用 场景，让以往无法想象的应用成为可能，也为开发社区提供了更多选择， 为提升用户体验提供了技术保障。WebAssembly 标准的正式发布，让 Web 技术社区不再满足于浅尝辄止的保守应用，终于可以大胆地将其作为一个 正式的选型方案，这也势必会大力推进相应行业场景的发展。期待在 WebAssembly 标准化的推进过程中看到更多的 WASM 应用大放异彩。 "

胡尊杰，360 奇舞团 Web 前端技术经 理

Alibaba Group

"Alibaba is pleased to see that WebAssembly finally becomes a W3C Recommendation. We hope this new standard could trigger more innovation from the developer community as well as to enrich the functionality and experiences of the Web."

Hongru(Judy) Zhu, W3C Advisory Board Member, General Manager of Standardization Department, Alibaba Group

Agora.io

"WebAssembly makes it possible to provide strong computing capabilities on Web. It will exceedingly expand the application scenario of Web Apps, and rapidly increase the chance of developing compute-intensive Apps including real-time video/audio processing, hardcore games and AI with Web technologies. As an RTC service provider, Agora is devoted to deliver services with better real-time performance. We have released products based on WebAssembly, which enhances the performance and compatibility of video stream processing. We belief WebAssembly will be the most important option for Web developers to implement high performance Web Apps."

Chun Gao，Senior Architect of Agora

Baidu

"热烈祝贺 WebAssembly 标准正式发布！百度一直是 W3C 的坚定支持者和参与者、贡献者和先行者，在 WebAssembly 的 runtime 平台技术、小程序小游戏和区块链技术等各个方面都有不错的应 用。随着标准的发布，我们将继续联合产业同仁一起打造开放、平等、协 作、分享的 Web 新生态。也期待 WebAssembly 标准能为 Web 新生态的繁 荣注入全新动力！"

吴萍，百度 App 主任架构师

Huawei

"Congrats to this new milestone of WebAssembly. We believe it’s a very promising technology - it enhances the performance of Web and also acts as a nice bridge between Web and non-Web platforms. We look forward to more adoptions of WebAssembly in practice."

Zhiqiang Yu，W3C Advisory Committee Representative of Huawei

Tencent

"Web 的能力越来越强，承载的业务越来越复杂，需要的 计算能力也越来越高。随着 WebAssembly 技术飞速发展，我们终于迎来了 WebAssembly 标准的正式发布。2008 年我们迎来了 Web 性能的第一次飞 跃 JIT 技术，如今 WebAssembly 将再一次大幅提升 Web 性能。我们得以 将更多桌面端的软件高效地移植到 Web，同时也可以在 Web 中使用 C/C++、Rust、Go 来优化需要大量计算的模块。WebAssembly 技术日益成 熟，将促进更多的应用从桌面延伸到 Web，这将赋予本就十分强大的 Web 更加丰富的功能！"

于涛，腾讯技术总监、 Alloyteam 负责 人

Xiaomi

"WebAssembly 的标准化为 Web 技术的发展奠定了坚实 的基础，极大地扩展了 Web 应用的边界，解决了传统应用的可移植性问题， 提升了 Web 应用性能。 作为 W3C 会员，小米将继续支持和探索 WebAssembly 标准的落地应用，包括在浏览器、小游戏等重要场景支持 WebAssembly 。未来小米将持续在业务场景中进一步支持 WebAssembly 的 标准化发展。"

周珏嘉，小米集团技术委员会技术总 监

W3C and UNESCO IITE cooperate to raise awareness of Web Accessibility

W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (UNESCO IITE) are cooperating to provide a free online course built on the open curricula of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). By combining the technical expertise of W3C and its Member organizations with the educational networks of the UNESCO IITE, W3C aims to reach audiences on an international scale.

The W3Cx Introduction to Web Accessibility is open for enrollment today. The course will start on 28 January 2020.

Web Accessibility fundamentals for a wide range of professions

Designed to teach the fundamentals of Web accessibility and their benefits for people with and without disabilities, the Introduction to Web Accessibility course is intended for a wide range of Web professionals. As the Web has become indispensable for our daily lives, accessibility for people with disabilities has become increasingly essential for many organizations and governments around the world.

The course follows a logical progression exploring Web accessibility through real stories of people with disabilities; the many tangible and intangible benefits of Web accessibility, including its business case; the related international standards and checks; and how to integrate Web accessibility into organizational design and development processes. The course includes optional activities related to the particular skills students may want to develop; for example, coding activities and business development activities.

This course is based on the open curricula of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), a framework for developing courses using role-based modules that build on and extend the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) accessibility training resources. These curricula will be available to anyone to use as an authoritative foundation for creating courses, and are being developed through the consensus process of the W3C Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) with support from the European Commission (EC) funded WAI-Guide Project (Grant 822245).

Taught by international expert Trainers from W3C Member organizations

On edX, a non-profit platform for education and learning, W3Cx's Introduction to Web Accessibility course features expert trainers from W3C Member organizations from around the world including: Deque, Infoaxia, Intopia, Knowbility, The Paciello Group, and Web Key IT, all using the WAI Open Curriculum.

These expert trainers will cover the definition and scope of Web accessibility. This will include how people with disabilities use different assistive technologies and adaptive strategies to interact on the Web for all disabilities impacted by Web accessibility, including hearing, learning and cognitive, neurological, physical, speech, and visual disabilities. Students will learn the business and social benefits of Web accessibility, and learn how to find and use technical standards and training resources from W3C so that they can start working on Web accessibility.

Free course on W3Cx, optional certificate

Introduction to Web Accessibility is the sixth online course available on W3Cx, W3C’s online learning platform on edX, the world's leading nonprofit online learning platform. Since the initial HTML5 online course launched on W3Cx, over 950,000 students from around the world have enrolled in a W3Cx course. Whether starting their professional life, or embarking on a new chapter, many students have seen their career prospects expand as a result of taking courses in the W3Cx Front-End Web Developer Professional Certificate Program: HTML5 & CSS Fundamentals, CSS Basics, HTML5 Coding Essentials and Best Practices, JavaScript Introduction, and HTML5 Apps and Games.

Students can audit the Introduction to Web Accessibility for free, or choose to receive a Verified Certificate for $99 USD. A verified certificate from edX can provide proof for an employer, school, or other institution that a student has successfully completed an online course. Verified Certificates enable students to gain access to graded materials, unlimited course materials at any time, and to showcase their accomplishments on their resume.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon which websites are built. W3C works on Web accessibility, internationalization, security and privacy across hundreds of Web technologies. That work is created in the open, provided for free and under the unique W3C Patent Policy. For our work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award. And for its work to standardize a Full TV Experience on the Web, W3C received a 2019 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

About the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an integral part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In partnership with organizations around the world, WAI pursues accessibility of the Web for people with disabilities through the following primary activities: ensuring that core technologies of the Web support accessibility features; developing guidelines for web content, user agents, and authoring tools; facilitating development of evaluation and repair tools for accessibility; conducting education and outreach; coordinating with research and development that can improve future accessibility of the Web; and promoting coordination and harmonization of web accessibility standards.

WAI benefits from multi-stakeholder involvement throughout its work, including representation from industry, disability communities, accessibility research, and government. Since its inception in 1997, WAI has produced and is widely known for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG), User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG), and Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA), as well as technical and educational guidance to support the implementation of these accessibility standards. For more information see https://www.w3.org/WAI/.

About UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (UNESCO IITE)

For over two decades the core principle: "Every learner matters and matters equally" has led the aspiration and performance of the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (UNESCO IITE). Established in 1997 as the UNESCO category 1 Institute with a global mandate for ICT in education, it has significantly contributed to the promotion of equal teaching and learning opportunities for all, no matter the context, abilities, location or circumstances. In its vigorous activity, UNESCO IITE facilitates the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education, while continuously and diligently involving international and local stakeholders in both creating and maintaining conditions for inclusive and equitable education. For more information see https://iite.unesco.org/.

End Press Release

W3C Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

UNESCO IITE Media Contact

Elena Varkvasova, Programme Specialist, Unit of Teacher Professional Development and Networking, UNESCO IITE <e.varkvasova@unesco.org>
+7 965 496 72 00 (Moscow Standard Time)

The Web Payment Security Interest Group complements existing specification-level discussions around EMV® Secure Remote Commerce (SRC), EMV 3-D Secure (3DS), FIDO Alliance's FIDO2 specifications, and W3C's Web Authentication and Payment Request APIs. The group also provides the foundation for collaboration around future technical specifications.

Deliverables: Vision and Analysis

The Web Payment Security Interest Group charter defines a scope of activities that includes formulation of a vision for web payment security, development of use cases, gap analysis, liaisons with other organizations, and identification of standardization opportunities for each organization. The Interest Group does not publish specifications. Technical work is carried out in other groups within each organization, such as the FIDO2 Technology Working Group, the W3C Web Payments Working Group, or one of EMVCo's working groups.

Call for Participation

EMVCo, FIDO Alliance, and W3C encourage their respective members to join the Interest Group. For more information about how to join the group, please see the Web Payment Security Interest Group home page.

About the FIDO Alliance

The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, fidoalliance.org, was formed in July 2012 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication technologies, and remedy the problems users face with creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords. The FIDO Alliance is changing the nature of authentication with standards for simpler, stronger authentication that define an open, scalable, interoperable set of mechanisms that reduce reliance on passwords. FIDO authentication is stronger, private, and easier to use when authenticating to online services.

About EMVCo

EMVCo is the global technical body that facilitates the worldwide interoperability and acceptance of secure payment transactions by managing and evolving the EMV Specifications and related testing processes. EMV is a technology toolbox that enables globally interoperable secure payments across face-to-face and remote environments. Adoption of EMV Specifications and associated approval and certification processes promotes a unified international payments framework, which supports an advancing range of payment methods, technologies and acceptance environments. The specifications are available royalty free, designed to be flexible, and can be adapted regionally to meet national payment requirements and accommodate local regulations.

EMVCo is collectively owned by American Express, Discover, JCB, Mastercard, UnionPay and Visa, and focuses on the technical advancement of the EMV Specifications. To provide all payment stakeholders with a platform to engage in its strategic and technical direction, EMVCo operates an Associates Programme and encourages all interested parties to get involved.

EMV® is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries and an unregistered trademark elsewhere. The EMV trademark is owned by EMVCo, LLC. Visit www.emvco.com for further information and join EMVCo on LinkedIn.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), www.w3.org, is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C develops well known specifications such as HTML5, CSS, and the Open Web Platform as well as work on security and privacy, all created in the open and provided for free and under the unique W3C Patent Policy. For its work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing nearly 500 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Press Release

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Megan Shamas
Montner Tech PR
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EMVCo PR Contacts

Kirsty Blackburn / David Amos
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https://www.w3.org/, and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., — 4 March 2019 — The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the FIDO Alliance today announced the Web Authentication (WebAuthn) specification is now an official web standard. This advancement is a major step forward in making the web more secure— and usable—for users around the world.

 

 

W3C's WebAuthn Recommendation, a core component of the FIDO Alliance's FIDO2 set of specifications (1), is a browser/platform standard for simpler and stronger authentication. It is already supported in Windows 10, Android, and Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari (preview) Web browsers. WebAuthn allows users to log into their internet accounts using their preferred device. Web services and apps can — and should—turn on this functionality to give their users the option to log in more easily via biometrics, mobile devices and/or FIDO security keys, and with much higher security over passwords alone.

A user-friendly solution to password theft, phishing and replay attacks

It's common knowledge that passwords have outlived their efficacy. Not only are stolen, weak or default passwords behind 81 percent of data breaches, they are a drain of time and resources. According to a recent Yubico study, users spend 10.9 hours per year entering and/or resetting passwords, which costs companies an average of $5.2 million annually. While traditional multi-factor authentication (MFA) solutions like SMS one-time codes add another layer of security, they are still vulnerable to phishing attacks, aren’t simple to use and suffer from low opt-in rates.

With FIDO2 and WebAuthn, the global technology community has come together to provide a shared solution to the shared password problem. FIDO2 addresses all of the issues with traditional authentication:

• Security: FIDO2 cryptographic login credentials are unique across every website, biometrics or other secrets like passwords never leave the user’s device and are never stored on a server. This security model eliminates the risks of phishing, all forms of password theft and replay attacks.
• Convenience: Users log in with convenient methods such as fingerprint readers, cameras, FIDO security keys, or their personal mobile device.
• Privacy: Because FIDO keys are unique for each Internet site, they cannot be used to track you across sites.
• Scalability: websites can enable FIDO2 via simple API call across all supported browsers and platforms on billions of devices consumers use every day.

Getting started

For services providers and vendors ready to get started with FIDO2 specifications and browser/platform support, the FIDO Alliance has provided testing tools and launched a certification program. Currently, there are many FIDO2 Certified solutions available to support a wide variety of use cases, including FIDO Certified Universal Servers that support FIDO2 and all prior UAF and U2F devices for full backward compatibility with the full range of certified FIDO authenticators.

Visit the FIDO Alliance website for more information on FIDO2, including resources for developers and product vendors interested in taking part in the FIDO Certified program.

(1) FIDO2 is comprised of the W3C’s Web Authentication specification (WebAuthn) and FIDO Alliance’s corresponding Client-to-Authenticator Protocol (CTAP).

About the FIDO Alliance

The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, www.fidoalliance.org, was formed in July 2012 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication technologies, and remedy the problems users face with creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords. The FIDO Alliance is changing the nature of authentication with standards for simpler, stronger authentication that define an open, scalable, interoperable set of mechanisms that reduce reliance on passwords. FIDO authentication is stronger, private, and easier to use when authenticating to online services.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C develops well known specifications such as HTML5, CSS, and the Open Web Platform as well as work on security and privacy, all created in the open and provided for free and under the unique W3C Patent Policy. For its work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Press Release

FIDO Alliance PR Contacts

Megan Shamas, Montner Tech PR, +1.203.226.9290
<press@fidoalliance.org>

W3C Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

Testimonials from W3C members

Duo Security, a Cisco business unit • Google • Microsoft Corporation • Mozilla Foundation• Nok Nok Labs • Yubico

Duo Security, a Cisco business unit

"The WebAuthn specification is a major and collaborative leap forward in the evolution of simpler, stronger user authentication. As pioneers in the authentication space, Duo Security knows that for security to be effective, it has to be easy. WebAuthn’s security and privacy protections, built-in phishing resistance and ease-of-use give it the potential to drive widespread adoption across enterprise and consumer markets, making everyone safer as a result. True passwordless authentication has been sought for a long time - today, we’re closer to realizing that goal with WebAuthn."

James Barclay, Senior R&D Engineer, Duo Security, a Cisco business unit

Google

"The fact that users get phished is not really their failing. It was a gap in the internet infrastructure that made them vulnerable. With today’s announcement, the internet community is closing that gap. The internet infrastructure now has the tools to provide user friendly phishing-resistant authentication at scale. Google has been part of this journey since the earliest days, we introduced Security Key based authentication in 2014, the Advanced Protection Program in 2017, and the Titan Security Key in 2018. Now with W3C WebAuthn and FIDO2 client support coming across all major client platforms an expanded set of capabilities is enabled. We look forward to leveraging these to offer our users additional new intuitive login experiences that are phishing-resistant."

Sam Srinivas, Product Management Director, Google and President, FIDO Alliance

Microsoft Corporation

"Our work with W3C and FIDO Alliance, and contributions to FIDO2 standards have been a critical piece of Microsoft’s commitment to a world without passwords, which started in 2015. Today, Windows 10 with Microsoft Edge fully supports the WebAuthn standard and millions of users can log in to their Microsoft account without using a password."

Alex Simons, Corporate Vice President, Program Management, Microsoft Identity Division

Mozilla Foundation

"Out of all multi-factor authentication solutions I know of, Web Authentication is our best technical response to the scourge of phishing. Protecting individuals' privacy and security is fundamental to Mozilla, and Web Authentication plays a key role in that protection. Mozilla supports the advancement of Web Authentication, and its end-goal of a phishing-free future for all the Web."

J.C. Jones, Cryptography Engineer, Mozilla

Nok Nok Labs

"Providing an alternative to phishable and inconvenient passwords that works across devices, apps, browsers, and websites has been the mission of Nok Nok Labs since our inception. The Web Authentication API is an important step towards the goal of enabling simple and strong authentication on the devices we use in our daily lives. It is imperative that the industry as a whole continues to add support for FIDO Authentication into all platforms to better protect consumers in our digital world."

Rolf Lindemann, Sr. Director of Products at Nok Nok Labs

Yubico

"Today's standardization of W3C's WebAuthn marks a milestone in the history of open authentication standards and internet security. Together, we achieved the near-impossible: the creation of a global standard supported by all platforms and browsers. Yubico is grateful to be a part of this journey and we look forward to the possibilities this is going to open for seamless, ubiquitous security for all internet users."

Stina Ehrensvard, CEO and Founder, Yubico

https://www.w3.org/ — 9 July 2018 — The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced today the launch of the Internationalization Initiative to further internationalize the Web.

Internationalization ("i18n") is the design and development of applications, specifications, etc, in a way that ensures they will work well for users regardless of culture, region, or language. Web for All has long been an area of strong commitment at the W3C. From its inception in early 1998, the i18n activity has worked to enable universal access to the Web, producing an extensive range of completed and ongoing work to make the World Wide Web truly world wide. However, as the Web continues to grow, as we welcome more of our world onto the Web, we want and need to do more.

"The key thing about the Web is that it is universal. One of the most important actions taken at the start - to make sure the Web was for everyone - was Internationalization. People who come from different cultures and use different languages work to make sure that all kinds of languages, whether read from left or right, can be shared and used on the Web. That makes me very proud. Inclusive of all cultures, the Web is richer." said Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web and W3C Director.

Tremendous progress in internationalizing the Web over recent decades, but more to do

Internationalization makes it possible to use Web technologies with different languages, scripts, and cultures. The W3C Internationalization activity works with W3C working groups and liaises with other organizations to internationalize the Web.

The Web community has made tremendous progress in internationalizing the Web over recent decades, from making Unicode the foundation of the Web, to providing support for bidirectional writing systems such as Arabic and Hebrew, to addressing styling needs for vertical text and other native typographic features, etc. But as Web penetration in language communities increases, as usage scenarios grow, and as new applications such as digital publishing emerge, there remains more to do.

Ethnologue lists 7,100 languages in current use, but W3Techs reports that less than two hundred languages are currently used for content pages on the Web, and that over half of all websites use English. Only around a quarter of current Web users use English online. If the Web is to live up to the "World Wide" portion of its name, it must support the requirements of worldwide users, and allow them to engage with content in the own languages.

"Supporting the W3C Internationalization Initiative with funding or expertise is a vital way that our Web community creates the future of the global Web." according to Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO.

W3C takes action to expand Internationalization core work

The Internationalization Initiative will attract participation in the form of stakeholders to provide expert personnel and additional funding to provide a significant boost to work in three main aspects of the internationalization continuum:

• Language enablement ensures that the Web supports the native typographic features that users around the world are accustomed to, and enables users to interact with the Web in line with long-standing print traditions.
• Developer support helps creators of specifications, of system-level tools (browsers, printers), of user-level tools (editors), to understand and implement support for international features. Plans to provide additional support include investigating ways to meet internationalization requirements in new areas of technology and tooling.
• Author support expands educational and outreach to people creating web content in their own language, as well as to companies who build or localize a large number of websites in many languages.

Typical activities include:

• Gap analysis & prioritization; Documenting requirements.
• Reviews; Guidelines & checklists; Architectural solutions.
• Educational resources; Outreach; Checker tools.

Founding Sponsors and participants partnering to truly connect all communities

W3C Members Alibaba, Apple, Advanced Publishing Lab (Keio University), Monotype, and The Paciello Group have stepped forward as Founding Sponsors of the Internationalization Initiative. Sponsors enjoy unique benefits, including a seat on the Internationalization Review Board and the ability to sponsor specified goals or projects.

In addition to sponsorship funding, the W3C is seeking stakeholders to provide expert personnel to help with the initiatives outlined above. It is important for people around the world to contribute to building the international Web on behalf of their own communities. In addition, those who develop Web technologies need to ensure that resources are available so that developing regions don't become second-class citizens on the Web.

About W3C Internationalization

The mission of W3C Internationalization (I18n) Initiative is to enable universal access to the World Wide Web. It proposes and coordinates the adoption at W3C of techniques, conventions, technologies, and designs that enable and enhance the use of the Web, with and between the various different languages, scripts, regions, and cultures. W3C pursues this goal in various ways, including collaboration with W3C groups, coordination with other organizations, creation of educational materials, and technical work itself on various topics. Acclaimed work ranges from the popular Internationalization Checker, to the widely used documents on Working with Time Zones, Character Model for the World Wide Web, or Requirements for Japanese Text Layout.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C develops well known specifications such as HTML5, CSS, and the Open Web Platform as well as work on security and privacy, all created in the open and provided for free and under the unique W3C Patent Policy. For its work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

End Press Release

Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

Testimonials from Founding Sponsors

Advanced Publishing Lab, Keio University • Alibaba • Monotype • The Paciello Group

Advanced Publishing Lab, Keio University

Keio Advanced Publishing Laboratory (APL), which is sponsored by four major Japanese publishers and the biggest ebook distributor in Japan, sincerely appreciates W3C for the internationalization of the Web.

APL welcomes the Internationalization Initiative. We ardently desire to contribute for W3C so that the Web will truly work for stakeholders all around the world. APL is convinced that many requirements from the Japanese market are also applicable to other languages, scripts, and culture.

Jun Murai, Director of APL, Professor, Keio University

Alibaba

A Web that truly works for stakeholders all around the world is in the best interests of the entire Web community, and more broadly, the human society. Alibaba sincerely hopes that, through I18N initiative activities such as this sponsorship program, more members in the community could collaborate on taking care of the areas that have been less adequately covered in the current I18N activity and handling the new emerging challenges. Some specific suggested topics include the requirements from Southeast Asia and India. As a member in the Web community, we want to make sure that the Web for All definition covers them as well.

Judy Zhu, Alibaba, Standardization Director

Monotype

Monotype is proud to support W3C Internationalization initiative. We believe this core activity of W3C contributes directly to building a stronger foundation of the Web, one that enables it to serve both as a main communication technology and a digital publishing medium. As such, ensuring that people can communicate in any language of the world and on any platform is a critical requirement, the one that is challenging and ambitious at the same time. The effects of this activity may not be immediately visible to a wide audience, but it is of vital importance for the adoption of the lesser used languages to connect people throughout the world together.

Vladimir Levantovsky, Monotype, Director, Standards & Technology Strategy

The Paciello Group

The Paciello Group (TPG) believes that internationalisation is a key part of the web platform, and it is happy to support this initiative at the W3C. The web after all, "is for everyone".

Léonie Watson, The Paciello Group, Director of Developer Communications

https://www.w3.org/ — 5 June 2018 — Today W3C announces a significant update to W3C's internationally-recognized Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which addresses accessibility of web content, websites and web applications on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 expands upon guidance developed by W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) over the years, and is used widely around the world to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities.

 

 

"Developed through W3C's consensus process and WAI's strong multi-stakeholder engagement, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 helps Web designers and developers better meet the needs of users with disabilities and older users. The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) addressed new requirements towards a goal of coordinated international uptake and standards harmonization." — Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO

Enables Website Developers to Reach a Broader Audience

WCAG 2.1 expands existing coverage of mobile accessibility, and adds more provisions in the areas of low vision, and cognitive and learning disabilities.

"WCAG 2.1 improves support for interactions using touch, including guidance for complex gestures and for avoiding unintended activation of a touch interface. For low vision, WCAG 2.1 extends contrast requirements to graphics and introduces new requirements for text and layout customization to support better visual perception of content. And for cognitive, language, and learning disabilities, WCAG 2.1 includes requirements to provide information about the specific purpose of input controls and to support timeouts due to inactivity; both to help users better understand web content and how to successfully interact with it." — Andrew Kirkpatrick, Head of Accessibility, Adobe

As with WCAG 2.0, following these guidelines will make content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and learning disabilities and cognitive limitations. Following these guidelines can also make websites more usable for all users.

Continues Evolution of W3C WAI's Authoritative and Testable Accessibility Guidance

WCAG 2.1 updates WCAG 2.0 and expands W3C's accessibility guidance, while maintaining W3C's standard of implementable, technology neutral, objectively testable and universally applicable accessibility guidance. All new provisions have been tested in implementations across different types of websites and web content. The Working Group has taken care to maintain backwards compatibility with the internationally-recognized WCAG 2.0, in that websites that conform to WCAG 2.1 will also conform to WCAG 2.0, which remains a W3C Recommendation.

WCAG 2.0 was designed as a highly stable, technology-agnostic standard, and has been kept relevant through updates to informative supporting resources. As with WCAG 2.0, WCAG 2.1 is supported by an extensive library of implementation techniques and educational materials, including Understanding WCAG 2.1 and Techniques for WCAG 2.1, which have been redesigned and moved to a different format to allow WAI to continue to update these on an ongoing basis.

Wide Support for this Advance; Expected International Uptake

WCAG 2.1 has received wide support from industry, including accessibility-focused businesses, the disability community, research, education and government, as shown in the accompanying testimonials.

In addition, W3C is coordinating with national and international regions updating their standards and policies, including the current update of the European Norm (EN) 301 549, which has been undergoing its own independent review process.

"W3C encourages organizations and individuals to use WCAG 2.1 in web content and applications, and to consider WCAG 2.1 when updating or developing new policies, in order to better address the needs of more web and mobile users with disabilities. Additionally, we welcome continued engagement from the international community as we develop future accessibility guidelines." — Judy Brewer, WAI Director

WCAG 2.1 is part of W3C WAI's stably evolving well regarded accessibility guidance, which also includes the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0, and the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0. These guidelines, as well as an extensive library of supporting materials for WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 are available at www.w3.org/WAI/.

About the World Wide Web Consortium

The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C develops well known specifications such as HTML5, CSS, and the Open Web Platform as well as work on security and privacy, all created in the open and provided for free and under the unique W3C Patent Policy. For its work to make online videos more accessible with captions and subtitles, W3C received a 2016 Emmy Award.

W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of dedicated technologists representing more than 400 Member organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. For more information see https://www.w3.org/.

About the Web Accessibility Initiative

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is a coordinated program of accessibility-related work, within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), that works with organizations around the world to make the Web more accessible for people with disabilities and older users. Accessibility work at W3C includes ensuring that Web technologies support accessibility; developing accessibility guidelines; developing resources to support improved evaluation tools; developing resources for education and outreach; coordinating with research and development efforts that can affect future accessibility of the Web; and promoting harmonization of international Web accessibility standards. WAI is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), the European Commission's Information Society Technologies Programme, Bocoup, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. For more information see http://www.w3.org/WAI/

End Press Release

Media Contact

Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator <w3t-pr@w3.org>
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)

Testimonials about WCAG 2.1

Access Board • Accessibility Foundation • Adobe • Alfasado• AMAC Accessibility at Georgia Tech • Benetech • Beyondsoft • China Mobile • Conexxus • Consensus Systems LLC • European Disability Forum • G3ict – Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs • IBM • Interactive Accessibility • Intopia • Knowbility • Mitsue-Links Co. Ltd. • NIC.br • The Paciello Group • UK Government • VitalSource • Wiley • Zhejiang University

Access Board

The Access Board applauds progress made by the W3C Accessibility Guidelines Working Group in their release of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Recommendation. The Working Group’s efforts to broaden the range of disability needs currently addressed by WCAG 2.0 will benefit many individuals who still encounter barriers to accessing the web.

David M. Capozzi, Executive Director

Accessibility Foundation

WCAG 2.1 is a vital set of guidelines for web accessibility that strongly supports innovative solutions for web and mobile applications. We are particularly happy with the addition of provisions for people with low vision and cognitive and learning disabilities. One of the tasks of the Accessibility Foundation is monitoring the accessibility of websites and mobile applications of public and private sector organizations. For them, WCAG 2.1 supports both innovation and European legislation and standards (EN 301-549). We will continue to support EOWG in the update and drafting of related documents and tools like the WCAG-EM report tool and accessibility statements.

Eric Velleman, Scientific Director

Adobe

Adobe congratulates the World Wide Web Consortium on the release of WCAG 2.1 and is proud to be a contributor to this important and needed update to WCAG 2.0. This update offers improved support for people with disabilities and provides a clear signal from the W3C and W3C member companies that accessibility standards need to keep up with advances in technology. The crucial backward-compatibility of WCAG 2.1 will help ensure that accessibility standards can evolve to keep up with technology without sacrificing the standards harmonization that is so important to successful implementation of accessibility on a global scale. WCAG 2.1 will be part of Adobe’s development strategy moving forward to help us create solutions that benefit everyone.

Kumar Vora, VP & GM, Cloud Platform and Experiences

Alfasado

アルファサード(株)は、W3CのWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1の勧告を歓迎します。私達は新WCAG2.1が、Webの本質である普遍性(universality)と、障害の有無に関わらずあらゆる人がアクセスできる世界の 実現を加速することを確信します。アルファサードは、制作・運用中のWebサイトやWebアプリケーションを新WCAG2.1に対応を進め、自社開発・提 供のWCAG 2.0対応試験ツールを新WCAG2.1へ対応させてゆくことを表明します。

アルファサード株式会社 代表取締役 野田 純生

AMAC Accessibility at Georgia Tech

AMAC Accessibility is excited about the improved updates within WCAG 2.1. Unrestricted access to digital content for people with disabilities represents everything we at AMAC Accessibility strive toward, both for our customers with disabilities, along with our various shareholders and agencies we serve across the globe. WCAG 2.1 assists us in supporting and reinforcing that commitment. Also, as someone who is legally blind, and benefits directly from the improvements in WCAG 2.1 for people with low vision, I am personally grateful for the guidance and leadership of W3C-WAI in shepherding this important process, and bringing it to fruition in such short order.

John Rempel, QA Accessibility Analyst

Benetech

Benetech is excited that low-vision and cognitive disability success criteria have been added to the WCAG 2.1 specification. These additions offer opportunities for greater inclusion and better support for students with disabilities and learning differences.

Charles LaPierre, Technical Lead, DIAGRAM Center and Born Accessible

Beyondsoft
博彦科技

博彦科技：十年磨一剑，翘首以盼的WCAG 2.1终于发布了。WCAG 2.1版本不仅覆盖了web网页更多的展示形式，还顺应时代的要求，极大增加了移动端可访问性；同时制定了更多详细规则，进一步保障视力、认知和学习障碍等人士平等、便利 的获取信息。博彦科技正在积极给本公司的产品实现WCAG 2.1，为残障人士提供更好的服务。

博彦集智科技副总裁 韩洁

China Mobile
中国移动

WCAG 是一项有着重要实用价值和深远社会意义的成果，这项工作让广大残障人士更加容易访问Web内容，让人人享有平等获取信息服务的权利。我们也将学习 WCAG成果，结合人工智能、5G、高清多媒体通信等技术，与产业链共同推进无障碍通信技术的研究和应用，为人人平等享有智能通信服务的权利而努力。

程宝平 中国移动杭州研发中心融合通信系统部负责人

Conexxus

For us at Conexxus, convenience in the retail user experience is a key concern, promoting availability, understandability, and expedient location of services. Likewise, for the W3C, accessibility in the Web user experience is fundamental, promoting the ability of people with different backgrounds, talents, and capabilities to interact successfully with the World Wide Web. Accessibility makes using the Web convenient for everyone! Because it addresses evolving consumer demands for convenience in using mobile devices, Conexxus welcomes WCAG 2.1, and commends the on-going efforts of the W3C to make the web convenient for everyone.

Linda Toth Director of Standards

Consensus Systems LLC

The W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines have been one of the great success stories of the Open Web. The Web is accessible to people of various abilities due to the hard work of the W3C and WCAG 2.1 continues this important work. ConsenSys is pleased to support a fully accessible Web for all.

Dr. David Hyland-Wood, Blockchain Protocol Architect

European Disability Forum

Technologies constantly evolve and converge in the web. Therefore, the accessibility standards must also progress in parallel, so persons with disabilities are not left behind and can access all digital services on an equal basis with others as required by the UN CRPD. This was the objective of the advocacy campaign of the European disability movement towards the adoption of the 2016 EU Directive on the accessibility of websites and mobile apps of public sector bodies. We are proud to say that this will be the first legislation in the world that will be underpinned by WCAG 2.1 and that 80 million Europeans with disabilities will benefit from the most up-to-date web accessibility standards.

Yannis Vardakastanis, President

G3ict – Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs

The release of WCAG 2.1 is of great value to the 177 countries parties to the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities seeking to implement its accessiblity provisions. Thanks to W3C’s effective consensus building processes among multiple stakeholders, the Web Content Accessiblity Guidelines are well recognized as the global standard for web accessiblity which most governments and user organizations refer to. Having them updated will greatly facilitate the work of governments, advocacy organizations and user organizations promoting accessiblity. WCAG 2.1, by incorporating recent technology innovation and global usage patterns will definitely further reinforce their universal adoption.

Axel Leblois, President and Executive Director

IBM

With the launch of WCAG 2.1, web content will be more accessible to people with disabilities and the coverage is expanded to reflect the ever-growing use of mobile technology. Through a lot of hard work, the Working Group met an ambitious timeline to deliver on schedule in support of international updates, including the new EN 301-549 standards in Europe and updates to standards in China. Interactive Accessibility is proud to have contributed to a very important update to the W3C’s internationally-recognized Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Simeon McAleer, Ph.D., IBM Accessibility Center of Excellence

Interactive Accessibility

With the launch of WCAG 2.1, web content will be more accessible to people with disabilities and the coverage is expanded to reflect the ever-growing use of mobile technology. Through a lot of hard work, the Working Group met an ambitious timeline to deliver on schedule in support of international updates, including the new EN 301-549 standards in Europe and updates to standards in China. Interactive Accessibility is proud to have contributed to a very important update to the W3C’s internationally-recognized Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Kathleen Wahlbin, CEO

Intopia

We welcome the release of WCAG 2.1, which will better support the creation of an inclusive digital world. This extension to the internationally-recognised WCAG 2.0 standard formalises what many have considered best practice for web accessibility. It will particularly benefit users with low vision and cognitive and learning disabilities, and mobile accessibility. It's encouraging that many of the organizations we work with are actively embracing the new extension.

Sarah Pulis, Co-Founder

Knowbility

Knowbility welcomes the efforts of the W3C to update WCAG to improve web accessibility for all. We are pleased to see the new WCAG 2.1 success criteria extend access to areas of disability not covered before. We acknowledge the efforts of all contributors to research and develop these new success criteria.

Sharron Rush (Executive Director), and Katie Haritos-Shea (AC Rep)

Mitsue-Links Co.,Ltd.

Mitsue-Links is pleased that the W3C has officially recommended WCAG 2.1. To date, we have proactively used WCAG 2.0 as a requisite quality standard so that everyone can use Mitsue-Links designed and developed websites/web applications. As both web users and access devices continue to diversify, going forward we will use WCAG 2.1. Furthermore, we expect that WCAG 2.1 will spread the notion that, in addition to those with disabilities and the elderly, ensuring accessibility positively contributes to all user experiences.

株式会社ミツエーリンクスは、WCAG 2.1がW3Cより勧告されたことを大変喜ばしく思います。WebサイトやWebアプリケーションを誰もが利用できるよう制作するうえで必要不可欠な品質基準のひとつとし て、これまで当社はWCAG 2.0に則ったWebサイトの構築・運用に積極的に取り組んできました。より多様なユーザーが、より多様なデバイスを使ってWebを利用するようになった現状を踏まえ、今 後はWCAG 2.1に則る予定です。また、アクセシビリティの確保が障害者や高齢者に限らず、あらゆるユーザーのユーザー体験に資するものとの理解が、WCAG 2.1の勧告によって社会に広く浸透することを強く期待します

Kazuhito Kidachi, Director and CTO
木達一仁，取締役 兼 CTO，株式会社ミツエーリンクス

NIC.br

The Network Information Center (NIC.br) congratulates W3C for the launch of the first update of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG 2.1. Accessibility on the Web is a very relevant topic in Brazil. Since 2016 a law has been passed requiring websites to follow good practices and international accessibility guidelines. NIC.br acts strongly in the dissemination of digital accessibility by promoting different activities such as courses, events, publications and translations of W3C content for the Brazilian market. WCAG 2.0 is the first authorized translation into Brazilian Portuguese and we intend to apply the same effort to make WCAG 2.1 available to the Brazilian public.

Hartmut Glaser, Director

The Paciello Group

WCAG 2.1 is an important step towards better accessibility for content on the modern web platform. The Paciello Group is pleased to have contributed to the new WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria, and to have incorporated them into our products and services so we are ready to help our clients around the world create even more inclusive user interfaces.

Léonie Watson Director of Developer Communications

UK Government

As a government that strives to ensure that its websites and services are accessible to all users, including people with disabilities, we fully support the updates to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. We welcome the new Success Criteria as they will help make websites and mobile apps accessible to more people and will help designers and developers avoid common barriers that can prevent people from successfully using them.

Alistair Duggin, Head of Accessibility, Government Digital Service

VitalSource

VitalSource, and all of our more than 25 million users, are excited about the release of WCAG 2.1. For more than a decade, our commitment to 'no compromise' accessibility has been welcomed by both our publishing partners, and the users of our platform. With its focus on mobile accessibility, WCAG 2.1 will provide improved benefits to the majority of our users who are on mobile platforms, and we look forward to releasing conformant updates later this year.

Rick Johnson, Vice President of Product Strategy at VitalSource

Wiley

The WCAG standards should be the cornerstone to any accessibility work. At Wiley, the WCAG standards are being built into the framework of our workflows and processes, so that content is born accessible. With WCAG 2.1, new standards help us create more versatile mobile content, as well as build improvements for users with low vision and cognitive disabilities. Here at Wiley we are extremely excited for the 2.1 release to further guide us in the journey to creating content and tools to help anyone—and everyone—learn and achieve their goals.

Laura Albert, Accessibility Specialist, Content Management Services

Zhejiang University
浙江大学

WCAG作为最早引入中国的互联网内容无障碍标准，自2008年以来一直对我国信息无障碍内容标准的制定与应用推广有着深 远的影响。本次发布的WCAG 2.1考虑了现阶段新技术的发展趋势与用户的客观需求。浙江大学在参与该标准制定工作的同时，也将把WCAG 2.1标准的部分内容与新制定的国家标准有机融合，以适应中国互联网的发展需求。

浙江大学软件学院常务副院长 卜佳俊教授