Vision for W3C: a manifesto for our operations and decision making

Today, W3C is pleased to announce the publication as a W3C Statement of Vision for W3C. W3C Statements provide a stable reference for documents not intended to be formal standards but that have been formally reviewed and are endorsed by W3C.

Vision for W3C articulates the World Wide Web Consortium’s core vision and operational principles, with goals to:

• Help the world understand what W3C is, what it does, and why it matters
• Communicate shared values and principles of the W3C community
• Be opinionated enough to provide guidance and a framework for making decisions, particularly on controversial issues
• Be timeless enough to remain relevant without needing frequent revision, while being open to evolving based on the needs of the community 

The World Wide Web Consortium, as a community leader in defining technical standards and guidelines for a World Wide Web that connects and empowers humanity, has a role to provide a neutral open forum where diverse voices from around the world work together by consensus. The web has had a tremendous impact on the world, and its impact will continue to grow in the future as it expands reach, knowledge, education, and services even more broadly. 

Vision for W3C was produced by the W3C Advisory Board (AB) as a work item that it has been tracking as a priority since 2021, and builds on the W3C Technical Architecture Group’s excellent Ethical Web Principles, as it fits into the same framework and promotes many of the same goals. Where Ethical Web Principles focuses on the “what” - what we produce - Vision for W3C focuses more on the “how” - by writing down core operational principles. We are grateful to the AB Members, W3C Member representatives and W3C Team Members who joined them in the Vision Task Force, for shepherding this important work. 

A few weeks ago we released to the public the initiatives for 2025-2028 that will support W3C’s strategic objectives. Both Vision for W3C and Ethical Web Principles provide the foundational basis upon which to envision how to exercise our social responsibilities through rigorous consideration of accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security. 

Written in the spirit of taking responsibility to address the impact of our work, Vision for W3C defines the values of W3C’s mission and the shared principles that guide our decisions as new technologies enable new actions and new possibilities. Vision for W3C allows us to take deliberate steps to address the many harmful unintended and undesirable consequences that arose from the web’s amazing success, and to continue to provide the consistent architecture that enables a World Wide Web that works, for everyone.