World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Meaning

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) 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.

The W3C is an international community that includes a full-time staff, industry experts, and several member organizations.

Background

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, which had experience with consortia, to host W3C. 

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. 

Alternatives

W3C compliance means that the HTML and CSS code that a website is built with is fully compliant with the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 

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