CfID backs World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) new enhanced standards

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Ensuring the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recently announced that Web of Things (WoT) Architecture and Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description (TD) are now official W3C Recommendations. This will enable the full potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) and promote interoperability in important areas including Smart Home, Industrial, Smart City, Retail, and Health applications.

W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe said, “By standardizing the web level descriptions of Things, we intend to promote interoperability in these important areas.”

According to the W3C, the social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge and its mission 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.

With technology evolving at a rapid rate, it is important to ensure products and services meet the needs of diverse audiences. This includes ‘edge users’, that is, people with different needs. Design that considers the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age and other forms of human difference means more people are included.

From Netflix to our smartphones and domestic appliances – ‘Things’ – can all access the Web and provide us with a tailored experience. Technology and IoT allows us to have individualised experiences and Inclusive Design supports this. Accessibility as a core subset of the design and technology field, acts as a foundation to the implementation of Inclusive Design more broadly.

The W3C aims to make the Web and its benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability. Centre for Inclusive Design supports the W3C’s promise to enhance interoperability by complementing existing standards to design a World Wide Web for everyone.

Click here to read the announcement from W3C for more information about Web of Things (WoT) Architecture and Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description (TD).