W3C - News

• W3C and the State of the Web in the AI Era

  W3C's VP Technical Strategy, Philippe Le Hegaret wrote "W3C and the State of the Web in the AI Era", a document putting together the observations and findings of the W3C Strategy Team about how the W3C technical agenda for the web needs to evolve based on the rise of AI agents. It is part of building a consistent, coherent shared vision for evolving the web, starting with AI. W3C needs to position itself as the venue where AI and web stakeholders discuss the risks and opportunities of this evolution of web user agents to develop responsible technology standards that align with W3C’s vision for the web. W3C’s core vision is to develop the web for all humanity: we have to keep humanity at the center of the web while allowing AI agents to act on their behalf.This paper is intended to foster discussion in the technical community at TPAC — the most important W3C community event of the year. In addition to outlining our understanding of how current and emerging AI technologies intersect with the W3C's roadmap this document can help TPAC 2026 participants prepare for the many discussions on the agentic web that will take place in group meetings, a mini-Workshop, and breakouts. This paper does include some early recommendations that we expect to socialize during TPAC and we seek community feedback.This report will be presented during the Web and AI Interest Group session on 29 October and feedback is also welcome to public-webai@w3.org and the w3c/webai-roadmap repository.

• First Public Working Draft: Animation Triggers

  The CSS Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Animation Triggers. It defines CSS properties and an API for creating mechanisms that affect animation playback, based on DOM events resulting from user interaction, or on entry/exit of ranges on animation timelines. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, etc.

• First Draft Notes: Verifiable Credential Threat Models

  The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published a series of W3C Working Group Note Drafts for threat models. All identify and analyze security and privacy threats specific to their respective recommendation-track documents:Recognized Entities Threat Model v1.0Data Integrity Threat Model v1.1Verifiable Credential Barcodes Threat Model v1.0Verifiable Credentials Render Method Threat Model v1.0VCALM Threat Model v1.0The working group welcomes comments via GitHub repository issues; the respective repository URL-s can be found in the header of each document.

• W3C issues press release about developing Verifiable Credential Barcodes

  Recently the data theft of approximately 160 million drivers licenses from the US and Canada was reported and unfortunately, identity thieves will use this data to impersonate victims. Real-time revocation is needed to protect individuals against identity theft. The future of physical document security is being decided as we speak. W3C Verifiable Credential Barcodes are the solution — and the technology is open and free for all to use. The Verifiable Credential Barcodes technology we are building in the W3C Verifiable Credentials Working Group is already protecting millions of people from identity theft and fraud, with the potential to protect billions more. We want to make sure that government organizations and policymakers know that there is a free and open solution to this problem that is being designed for the public good.Learn more in our press release: Data breaches, identity theft, and revocation: a real-world case study on why W3C is developing Verifiable Credential Barcodes.

• Updated Candidate Recommendation: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 2

  The SVG Working Group invites implementations of an updated Candidate Recommendation Snapshot of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 2.This is a fresh version of SVG2 with corrections, clarifications and improvements for more interoperability, in particular in implementations in web browsers.This specification defines the features and syntax for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Version 2. SVG is a language based on XML for describing two-dimensional vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. SVG content is stylable, scalable to different display resolutions, and can be viewed stand-alone, mixed with HTML content, or embedded using XML namespaces within other XML languages. SVG also supports dynamic changes; script can be used to create interactive documents, and animations can be performed using declarative animation features or by using script.To help the group continue its work in updating this widely-used technology, comments are welcome via Github issues by 1 December 2026.

• Consortium Members elect Board of Directors

  We are pleased to announce that W3C Consortium Members have elected the following seven people, listed in alphabetical order, to the World Wide Web Consortium, Inc. Board of Directors:Koichi MoriyamaChris NeedhamTheresa O'ConnorFlorian RivoalAvneesh SinghLéonie WatsonHongru (Judy) ZhuThey join Directors appointed by our current Partners: Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, Chunming Hu, Tatsuya Kurosaka (respectively by ERCIM, France; Beihang University, China; and WCAP, Japan); and Tim Berners-Lee who acts as a non-voting Board member.All Board terms are for two years, starting 30 September 2026 until 30 September 2028.We thank the 12 candidates who ran in this election.The W3C Board of Directors is the governing body of the Consortium. The Board has ultimate authority on its strategic direction, has legal obligations and fiduciary responsibility over W3C as a whole. Directors are formally responsible for the correct running of the organization; this is generally characterized in three broad “fiduciary” duties: (1) a duty of care (to exercise good business judgment of a reasonable person with their experience); (2) duty of loyalty (to serve the best interest of the organization); and (3) a duty of obedience (in accordance with all applicable laws and rules). W3C Board of Directors seats are non-paid positions. Learn more about the W3C Board of Directors responsibilities.

• W3C Workshop Report: The Future of ODRL

  W3C is pleased to announce the report from the W3C Workshop on the Future of ODRL, held in July 2026 in London, UK, and online.Bringing together participants from standards organizations, industry, academia and the broader policy, data and rights communities, the workshop covered media, core semantics, banking and finance, data spaces, legal and regulatory applications, and new language features. It was explicitly positioned as a turning point for ODRL.The emerging vision is considerably broader than simply producing another revision of the ODRL vocabulary. There was consensus to establish a new W3C ODRL Working Group set to work on ODRL 3.0 as a foundation for machine-readable, interoperable and increasingly machine-actionable policies, capable of operating across sectors and integrating with complementary standards for identity, provenance, legal information, data spaces and digital contracts.The workshop’s outcomes can be distilled into the following principal recommendations:Establish the new W3C ODRL 3.0 Working GroupStart with use cases and explicit requirementsStrengthen the formal semantics of ODRLDefine conformance for policy-processing softwareDevelop a comprehensive conformance test suiteAdopt modular and potentially multi-level conformanceImprove usabilityPosition ODRL as an interoperability layerInvestigate integration with complementary standardsThe workshop's closing discussion confirmed that the workshop chairs would draft a Working Group charter. The intention is to socialize the charter at TPAC 2026 in Dublin, with the objective of moving into the next phase of ODRL 3.0 by the end of 2026.W3C thanks JP Morgan Chase for hosting the workshop; thanks the Program Committee, the workshop speakers, and all participants for making this event successful.

• First Public Working Draft: Bitstring Status List v1.1

  The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Bitstring Status List v1.1. This specification describes a privacy-preserving, space-efficient, and high-performance mechanism for publishing status information such as suspension or revocation of Verifiable Credentials through use of bitstrings.Feedback is welcome via GitHub.

• Group Note Draft: Verifiable Credentials Data Model Threat Model v2.1

  The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published the first draft of a Group Note titled Verifiable Credentials Data Model Threat Model v2.1. This document describes a threat model for the Verifiable Credentials Data Model specification. It identifies and analyzes security and privacy threats specific to ecosystems in which issuers issue verifiable credentials to holders, who in turn present verifiable presentations to verifiers.

• Authorized Translations of WCAG 2.2 and 2.1 in French updated

  The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published updated Authorized French Translations of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG):Règles pour l’accessibilité des contenus web (WCAG) 2.2Règles pour l’accessibilité des contenus web (WCAG) 2.1 The Lead Translation Organization for these authorized translations was Access42. Other translations of accessibility resources, including non-technical and educational resources, are listed in All WAI Translations. W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) particularly encourages the development of authorized translations of WCAG 2.2 and other technical specifications to facilitate their adoption and implementation internationally. For information on developing an authorized translation, please see Policy for Authorized W3C Translations.Translations enable broader adoption of W3C resources and serve worldwide audience across languages and cultures. Explore more W3C translations and learn how to contribute to translation efforts.