W3C News

Author(s) and publish date By: Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, W3C President and Interim CEO Published: 2 October 2026 We are starting this public version of a W3C newsletter that we send to W3C Members and where I share timely and notable highlights and information selected from the busy and prolific work last month at W3C.

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.

Author(s) and publish date By: Xueyuan Jia, Principal, Team Contact Xiaoqian Wu, Director, China Member Relations Published: 28 September 2026 On September 6, 2026, the Web & AI International Standards Seminar on Generative UI and WebSkill, hosted by the W3C Representative Office in Shenzhen and held as part of the 2026 China Computer Federation (CCF) Standards Technical Conference, took place successfully in Shenzhen.

In this post, I cover some of the stakes and challenges in developing W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3. I use "websites" as an example, yet this information generally applies to apps, software, documents, and other digital content and technologies. Summary You could say that ideally WCAG would cover all the accessibility needs of people with disabilities, accessibility would be easy to implement in all situations, and comprehensive standards would be implemented in all websites.

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.

Author(s) and publish date Published: 24 September 2026 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.

Author(s) and publish date Published: 24 September 2026 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.

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) 2.2 Règles 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.

Author(s) and publish date Published: 17 September 2026 The Data Shapes Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of SHACL 1.2 Inference Rules. This document defines the Inference Rules support of the SHACL Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL). While the Core part of SHACL focuses on the basic syntax of shapes and constraint validation of data graphs, the SHACL Inference Rules cover features that can be used to infer new triples from existing triples in the data graph.

Author(s) and publish date Published: 15 September 2026 The Web Authentication Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Web Authentication: An API for accessing Public Key Credentials Level 4. This specification defines an API enabling the creation and use of strong, attested, scoped, public key-based credentials by web applications, for the purpose of strongly authenticating users.