W3C

Thank you to Facebook for the donation of Oculus Go Headsets to advance the work of the Immersive Captions Community Group, which is exploring accessible augmentative and virtual reality.

This W3C Community Group launched in the Fall of 2019 with a mission to identify, research, and where appropriate recommend best practices for captions in Immersive Media (Games & XR). It appreciates the opportunity to use Oculus Go Headsets as a platform for researching access, activation, and display settings for captions, to help ensure communication accessibility in augmentative and virtual reality.

The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group invites implementation of an updated Candidate Recommendation of WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browsers. This document defines a set of ECMAScript APIs in WebIDL to allow media to be sent to and received from another browser or device implementing the appropriate set of real-time protocols. This specification is being developed in conjunction with a protocol specification developed by the IETF RTCWEB group and an API specification to get access to local media devices. Comments are welcome by 24 September 2020.

The CSS Working Group has published a Candidate Recommendation of CSS Grid Layout Module Level 2 and an updated Candidate Recommendation of CSS Grid Layout Module Level 1. This CSS module defines a two-dimensional grid-based layout system, optimized for user interface design. In the grid layout model, the children of a grid container can be positioned into arbitrary slots in a predefined flexible or fixed-size layout grid. Level 2 expands Grid by adding “subgrid” capabilities for nested grids to participate in the sizing of their parent grids. Comments are welcome by 18 October 2020.

The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) has published a Working Draft of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 for wide review. This version has 9 new accessibility requirements (“success criteria”) since WCAG 2.1. The new success criteria address user needs of people with cognitive or learning disabilities, users of mobile devices, and users of ebooks. We want to hear from users, authors, tool developers, policy makers, and others about benefits from the new proposed success criteria, as well as how achievable you feel it is to conform to the new success criteria. Additional information is in the blog post Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Draft for Review. Please submit comments by 18 September 2020.

The Timed Text Working Group has published TTML Profiles for Internet Media Subtitles and Captions 1.2 as a W3C Recommendation. IMSC 1.2 is the latest version of the IMSC standard, which defines profiles of the Timed Text Markup Language for worldwide subtitling and captioning interchange. IMSC is used in applications such as CMAF, DASH, IMF, ATSC, DVB, etc. and is designed to work with SMPTE-TT, EBU-TT-D and other regional practices. IMSC 1.2 adds support for downloadable font resources. This feature is intended to improve fidelity by providing clients the exact font used during authoring and allow images to be added to inline text content – while providing graceful fallback. IMSC 1.2 is otherwise primarily a maintenance release that fixes outstanding bugs and generally improves specification text.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a First Public Working Group Note of Web App Manifest – Application Information. This document is a registry of supplementary members for the Web App Manifest specification that provide additional metadata to an application manifest. This metadata can be used in a digital storefront or other surfaces where this web application may be marketed or distributed, or to enhance an installation dialog when installing a web application.

W3C today adopted a new Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (CEPC), developed by the Positive Work Environment Community Group. W3C’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct defines accepted and acceptable behaviors and promotes high standards of professional practice. The goals of this code are to:

• Define acceptable and expected standards of behavior.
• Provide a benchmark.
• Ensure transparency in community and group management.
• Ensure an environment where people can participate without fear of harassment.
• Contribute to the identity of the organization.

This document supersedes the 2015 CEPC. Education and training materials are available from the Positive Work Environment public homepage.