Sophia-Antipolis, France. 2008.12.11 - Today W3C announced a new standard to aid Web designers and developers to create sites which better meet the needs of users with disabilities and older users. Drawing on extensive experience and community feedback, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 improve upon W3C's groundbreaking initial standard for accessible Web content.
 

 
This new standard from the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) will advance accessibility across the full range of Web content (such as text, images, audio, and video) and Web applications. WCAG 2.0 can be more precisely tested, yet it allows Web developers more flexibility and potential for innovation. Together with supporting technical and educational materials, WCAG 2.0 is easier to understand and use.
 
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. The Member organisations are the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM), and Keio University, Japan.
 
W3C's mission is:
"To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web."
 
In order for the Web to reach its full potential, the most fundamental Web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together. W3C refers to this goal as "Web interoperability." By publishing open (non-proprietary) standards for Web languages and protocols, W3C seeks to avoid market fragmentation and thus Web fragmentation.
 
W3C Develops Web Standards and Guidelines
W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines. Since 1994, W3C has published more than 110 such standards, called W3C Recommendations. W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software, and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web.
 
The W3C was created as an industry consortium dedicated to building consensus around Web technologies.
 
Co-founder of W3C, Tim Berners-Lee, invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at the European Particle Physics Laboratory, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote the first WWW client (a browser-editor running under NeXTStep) and the first WWW server along with most of the communications software, defining URLs, HTTP and HTML. Mr. Berners-Lee, has served as the W3C Director since the W3C was founded in 1994.