The World Wide Web Needs World Wide Standards

The World Wide Web is a universal medium, which has already demonstrated an enormous potential to link people and information across a large and expanding portion the globe. Over 1 billion people now browse the Web through their computers, while close to 2 billion have the potential to browse the Web through their mobile phones. The fastest growth in Web usage is within emerging economies. To ensure that there be a single, universal Web, it is imperative that the diverse requirements of the world's citizens are supported by Web technologies. And to ensure that the requirements are supported, it is imperative that the world's experts are involved in the development of Web standards. This presentation will summarize (1) the World Wide Web Consortium's experience in developing the open, royalty-free standards that are the foundation of the Web, and (2) the great opportunities that we see as the Web standards development community expands across the globe.