What are web standards?
Web standards are standards that websites should be programmed to meet. The standards are set by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) and cover the quality of the primary programming language and grammar (HTML/XHTML) used, the style sheet language and grammar used, and accessibility features that websites should use to make the site accessible to disabled people. All these standards are maintained on this site, and by having a website that conforms to the W3C standards it is a good starting point at enabling accessibility of your site. The W3C guidelines for accessibility are based on requirements in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, that all websites should be made accessible to disabled users otherwise the website will discriminate against a large proportion of users – In the same way that a business premises must be accessible by disabled people. For a site to be fully accessible it must be programmed correctly, and the website should validate with the W3C’s validation service.
Web standards are technologies, established by the W3C and other standards bodies, that are used to create and interpret web-based content. These technologies are designed to future-proof documents published on the Web and to make those documents accessible to as many people and devices as possible.
Web standards are technologies established by the W3C and other groups to create a common ground for Web development. The goal in creating these technologies is to insure the life span of documents on the Web as well as to make sure each of these documents work correctly for as many users as possible.
