nonprofit

W3C

International standards organization for the World Wide Web. Develops open, royalty-free standards including HTML, CSS, and accessibility guidelines. Founded by Tim Berners-Lee at MIT.

Current Team

Tim Berners-Lee Current

Founder

Oct 1, 1994 – Present

Track Record

Developed Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) making the web usable for people with disabilities - won 3 Emmy Awards

May 5, 1999

W3C developed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the global standard for web accessibility adopted by governments and organizations worldwide. WCAG ensures websites and applications are usable by people with visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive disabilities. W3C's accessibility work has won three Emmy Awards (2016, 2019, 2022) for the impact of its standards.

+ Accessibility + Open Internet & Web Freedom

Sources: W3C

Maintains royalty-free patent policy ensuring all web standards can be freely implemented by anyone

Oct 1, 1994

Since its founding in 1994, W3C has maintained a royalty-free patent policy requiring all W3C Recommendations (standards) to be implementable without licensing fees. This policy ensures HTML, CSS, accessibility guidelines, and other core web standards can be freely used by anyone, preventing vendor lock-in and fragmentation of the web.

+ Open Internet & Web Freedom + Open Source

Sources: W3C