The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published WCAG Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) 2.0 as a Group Note. This document describes a methodology with a step-by-step process to evaluate how well digital products conform to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2. 

It provides technology-agnostic guidance to define the evaluation scope, explore the target product, select a representative sample set from products, evaluate the selected sample set, and report the evaluation findings. This procedure is suitable for use in different evaluation contexts, including self-assessment and third-party evaluation. 

This document does not define feature-specific instructions, as the WCAG success criteria and supporting documents cover those. It also does not define additional WCAG 2 requirements, nor does it replace or supersede them in any way.

The Publishing Maintenance Working Group invites implementations of the following three Candidate Recommendation Snapshots:

• EPUB 3.4: EPUB® 3 defines a distribution and interchange format for digital publications and documents. The EPUB format provides a means of representing, packaging, and encoding structured and semantically enhanced web content — including HTML, CSS, SVG, and other resources — for distribution in a single-file container. This specification defines the authoring requirements for EPUB publications and represents the fourth major revision of the standard.
• EPUB Reading Systems 3.4: This specification defines the conformance requirements for EPUB 3 reading systems — the user agents that render EPUB publications.
• EPUB Accessibility 1.2: This specification specifies content conformance requirements for verifying the accessibility of EPUB® Publications. It also specifies accessibility metadata requirements for the discoverability of EPUB publications.

Comments are welcome via GitHub issues by 19 October 2026.

Today, the W3C Team proposed advancing Web Authentication: An API for accessing Public Key Credentials Level 3 to W3C Recommendation. This specification was published by the Web Authentication Working Group as a Candidate Recommendation Snapshot on 26 May 2026. This specification defines an API enabling the creation and use of strong, attested, scoped, public key-based credentials by web applications, for the purpose of strongly authenticating users. Conceptually, one or more public key credentials, each scoped to a given WebAuthn Relying Party, are created by and bound to authenticators as requested by the web application. The user agent mediates access to authenticators and their public key credentials in order to preserve user privacy. Authenticators are responsible for ensuring that no operation is performed without user consent. Authenticators provide cryptographic proof of their properties to Relying Parties via attestation. This specification also describes the functional model for WebAuthn conformant authenticators, including their signature and attestation functionality.

The Internationalization Working Group has published today a First Public Working Draft of Character Model for the World Wide Web: String Matching. This document builds upon Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Fundamentals to provide authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers a common reference on string identity matching on the World Wide Web and thereby increase interoperability.

Comments are welcome via the GitHub repository issues.

The Internationalization Working Group has published today a First Public Working Draft of Strings on the Web: Language and Direction Metadata. This document describes the best practices for identifying the language and direction for strings used on the Web.

Comments are welcome via the GitHub repository issues.

The CSS Working Group has published today a First Public Working Draft of CSS Linked Parameters Module Level 1. This spec introduces a way to pass CSS values into linked resources, such as SVG images, so that they can be used as CSS custom environment variables in the destination resource. This allows easy reuse of "templated" SVG images, which can be adapted to a site’s theme color, etc. easily, without having to modify the source SVG.

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

The Linked Web Storage Working Group has published the first draft of a Group Note titled Linked Web Storage Vocabulary. This document describes the Linked Web Storage Vocabulary, i.e., the RDFS [RDF-SCHEMA] vocabulary used by the Linked Web Storage Protocol [lws-core]. 

Alternate versions of the vocabulary definition exist in Turtle and JSON-LD.

The RDF & SPARQL Working Group has published the first draft of a Group Note titled What’s New in RDF 1.2. This document is informative in nature. Its purpose is to provide a summary of differences between RDF versions 1.1 and 1.2 and to introduce new additions in a very brief manner.

Readers new to RDF should start with the RDF 1.2 Primer and then move on to the specifications in which they are most interested. This document is meant to serve as a guide for those already familiar with RDF 1.1 who wish to understand changes in version 1.2.

The Data Shapes Working Group has published today a First Public Working Draft of SHACL 1.2 Profiling. SHACL, the Shapes Constraint Language, is a language for describing the structure of RDF graphs. SHACL may be used for a variety of purposes such as validating, inferencing, modeling domains, generating ontologies to inform other agents, building user interfaces, generating code, and integrating data. 

SHACL Profiling defines elements of the SHACL Shapes Constraint Language created to allow for profiles of SHACL and profiling with SHACL. This document's scope is limited to profiling of RDF graphs, including graphs containing SHACL Shapes. 

This specification is part of the SHACL 1.2 family of specifications. See the SHACL 1.2 Overview for a more detailed introduction to them.

The Pointer Events Working Group is pleased to publish Pointer Events Level 3 as a W3C Recommendation. The features in this specification extend or modify those found in Pointer Events, a W3C Recommendation that describes events and related interfaces for handling hardware-agnostic pointer input from devices including a mouse, pen, or touchscreen. For compatibility with existing mouse-based content, this specification also describes a mapping to fire Mouse Events for other pointer device types. 

This revision includes new features: altitudeAngle, azimuthAngle, pointerrawupdate event, associated coalesced events, and built-in predicted events.

Following the newer Recommendation, Pointer Events Level 2 has been marked as a W3C Superseded Recommendation:

The Security Interest Group has published the first draft of a Group Note titled W3C Standards Vulnerability Disclosure & Handling Process and Policy. This document defines how to report suspected security vulnerabilities in W3C standards and specifications (technical reports), so that issues can be triaged, confirmed, and resolved through the appropriate W3C processes. It is not for reporting vulnerabilities in software implementations or W3C operational infrastructure (see Out of scope).

The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft today for the Verifiable Credential Forgery Defense v1.0 specification. This publication is complementary to the publication of quantum-resistant cryptosuites and is motivated by the same threat. While cryptosuites let issuers secure new proofs with post-quantum signatures, this specification lets an issuer establish post-quantum-backed authenticity for credentials that may have been signed with conventional quantum-vulnerable algorithms and cannot, or is not feasible, to re-issue them. This is achieved by publishing a witness list that is itself the subject of a separate Verifiable Credential that can be signed with a quantum-resistant scheme.

The Working Group welcomes comments via the GitHub repository issues.

The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft today for the Quantum-Resistant Cryptosuites v1.0 specification. This document defines several Data Integrity Cryptosuites for use when generating a digital signature of, for example, Verifiable Credentials using Quantum-resistant digital signature algorithms.

Publication of this draft is especially timely, in view of some recent research results on quantum vulnerabilities. That study led experts to consider that there exists a small but meaningful probability that elliptic curve keys could be broken by the early 2030s. As a result, organizations have already started to convert their authentication services to eventually use quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms, with deadlines as early as 2029. This new specification will provide such digital signature schemes for verifiable credentials, and other data payloads, using the best stable quantum-resistant algorithms known today.

The Working Group welcomes comments via the GitHub repository issues.

W3C released today the 2026 diversity report. As part of our commitment and continued focus on diversity and inclusion, since 2018 we annually report on gender and geographic diversity of W3C's governing bodies.

We would like to be a model of supporting diversity. As an international organization, we can see the immense value we gain from having greater gender diversity, and expertise from across multiple countries and cultures. The diversity of the whole world needs to be reflected, as over 70% of the world is now online and more people continue to access and use the web we develop standards for, here together at the Web Consortium.

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

This year again, we want to financially help cover TPAC 2026 meeting travel costs for W3C participants from groups under-represented in the web community, who without financial support would not be able to attend TPAC in person. 

We seek contributors —big and small— who like us would like to see reflected in web standards and web design the diversity of background, gender, experiences, expertise and skills.

Explore our sponsorship packages

The Internationalization Working Group has published HTML Ruby Markup Extensions as a W3C Candidate Recommendation Snapshot. Ruby, a form of interlinear annotation, are short runs of text alongside the base text. They are typically used in East Asian documents to indicate pronunciation or to provide a short annotation. This specification revises and extends the markup model established by HTML to express ruby.

Comments are welcome via Github issues by 3 July 2026.

W3C announced today the W3C/GS1 Workshop on E-commerce for Humans and AI Agents, 8-9 September 2026, in Zurich, Switzerland, with remote participation. The event is hosted by Google.

Web content has historically been designed for humans, even when pages also expose structured data through APIs or embedded JSON-LD using vocabularies such as schema.org and the extension GS1 Web Vocabulary. LLMs and AI Agents are becoming a new intermediary between that content and end users: they summarize search results, follow links, and may support users in online activity before a person ever visits a page directly. 

This workshop aims to share experiences of creating content with AI Agents in mind. What are the practices that are most effective? What are the pitfalls? What shifts do content creators need to make in order to maximize the return on the investment in time, energy, and skill? 

The impetus for the workshop is from e-commerce, which will be a particular focus of the event. However, the discussion is expected to be informed by broader input related to content creation and publication.

If you wish to participate, please submit either a "Position Statement" or an "Expression of Interest" by July 10, 2026. See submission instructions.

The organizers and the Programme Committee will review submissions and use them to shape the workshop agenda, identify speakers, and ensure a useful range of perspectives across the workshop topics. 

Attendance is free for invited participants and is open to people who can contribute relevant experience, use cases, technical perspectives, implementation experience, research findings, or standardization questions. 

We aim to include diverse participation from relevant communities, including: 

• Content creators and curators of all kinds
• LLM and AI Agents providers, including in-browser AI Agents
• Brands making products to sell, and retailers selling them
• Search Engine Optimization practitioners
• Online data providers 

If you have any questions, please contact the Programme Committee at group-ecommerce-agents-pc@w3.org.

W3C leadership transitionW3C has announced a leadership transition. Dominique Hazaël-Massieux has been appointed Interim CEO with immediate effect.

Please read more in our Press Release.

Today, the W3C Team proposed advancing Pointer Events Level 3 to W3C Recommendation. This specification was published by the Pointer Events Working Group as a Candidate Recommendation Draft on 22 May 2026. The features in this specification extend or modify those found in Pointer Events, a W3C Recommendation that describes events and related interfaces for handling hardware-agnostic pointer input from devices including a mouse, pen, or touchscreen. For compatibility with existing mouse-based content, this specification also describes a mapping to fire Mouse Events for other pointer device types.

This revision includes new features: altitudeAngle, azimuthAngle, pointerrawupdate event, associated coalesced events, and built-in predicted events. This revision of Pointer Events is intended to supersede Pointer Events Level 2.

The Web Authentication Working Group invites implementations of an updated Candidate Recommendation Snapshot of Web Authentication: An API for accessing Public Key Credentials Level 3. This specification defines an API enabling the creation and use of strong, attested, scoped, public key-based credentials by web applications, for the purpose of strongly authenticating users. Conceptually, one or more public key credentials, each scoped to a given WebAuthn Relying Party, are created by and bound to authenticators as requested by the web application. The user agent mediates access to authenticators and their public key credentials in order to preserve user privacy. Authenticators are responsible for ensuring that no operation is performed without user consent. Authenticators provide cryptographic proof of their properties to Relying Parties via attestation. This specification also describes the functional model for WebAuthn conformant authenticators, including their signature and attestation functionality.

Comments are welcome via Github issues by 23 June 2026.

The Data Shapes Working Group has published today a First Public Working Draft of SHACL 1.2 User Interfaces. This specification describes Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL) User Interfaces. This specification is part of the SHACL 1.2 family of specifications. See the SHACL 1.2 Overview for a more detailed introduction to them.

The Security Interest Group has published the first draft of a Group Note titled Threat Model for the Web. This document describes the Threat Model for the Web and include the Web Security Model and may include the goals that have not yet been achieved across the whole web platform, but which will still be applied in reviews of new and changed specifications.

The Timed Text Working Group is thrilled to announce the publication of IMSC Text Profile 1.3 as a W3C Recommendation. 

IMSC Text Profile 1.3 is the most recent addition to the IMSC family of specifications for the authoring and delivery of subtitles and captions worldwide. The rich styling and structured markup make it an ideal choice for expressive subtitles and AI training sets. 

This maintenance update improves on the IMSC 1.2 Text Profile by adding support for superscript and subscript text, and provides authoring guidelines for the Japanese language. The IMSC Hypothetical Render Model is also factored out as a separate Recommendation to ease future maintenance.

The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published today a First Public Working Draft of Recognized Entities v1.0. This specification describes a data model with which one or more recognized entities, such as one or more persons and/or organizations, can be described as known to perform specific actions, such as issuing or verifying a verifiable credential. The data model enables the publication or direct sharing of such information, providing a cryptographically-verifiable and privacy-preserving mechanism through which a holder can demonstrate that an entity whose credential they are using is recognized within a particular ecosystem.

The Working Group welcomes comments via the GitHub repository issues, the reference of which is also in the header of the document.

The W3C Advisory Committee has elected the following people to fill four seats on the W3C Advisory Board (AB), starting 1 July 2026: Daniel Appelquist, Wei Ding, Elena Lape, and Andrew Wafaa. They join continuing AB participants, Theresa O'Connor, Hiroshi Ota, Avneesh Singh, Hidde de Vries, Song Xu, and Brent Zundel.

Many thanks to the departing participants for their contributions to the AB, Max Gendler and Tatsuya Igarashi, whose terms end at the end of June 2026.

Created in March 1998, the Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance to the W3C Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. The Advisory Board also serves the W3C Members by tracking issues raised between Advisory Committee meetings, soliciting Member comments on such issues, and proposing actions to resolve these issues. The Advisory Board manages the evolution of the Process Document. As part of a W3C Council, members of the Advisory Board hear and adjudicate on Submission Appeals and Formal Objections. For several years, the AB has conducted its work in a public wiki. 

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