The CSS Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of CSS Borders and Box Decorations Module Level 4. This module contains the features of CSS relating to the borders and decorations of boxes on the page.

The Timed Text Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of IMSC Text Profile 1.3. This specification defines a text-only profile of [ttml2] intended for subtitle and caption delivery applications worldwide.

It improves over the Text Profile specified at at [ttml-imsc1.2], with the improvements summarized at L. Summary of substantive changes.

As 68% of the world is now online, we want and need to reflect the diversity of the whole world as more people continue to access, use and create the web. We believe that more diversity means better representation, which leads to better and more inclusive design. More diversity also brings higher quality results. 

W3C opened today, at the same time as registrations for TPAC 2025, the applications to two funds available as part of the W3C Community Engagement Support Program: The TPAC Inclusion Fund and the W3C Invited Experts Support Fund. This is designed to support people from under-represented groups who wouldn’t be able to attend or meaningfully contribute to TPAC without financial support.

TPAC is our major event of the year. It gathers our work groups and community for thought-provoking discussions and coordinated work to to develop open standards that enable a World Wide Web which connects and empowers humanity. TPAC 2025 is on 10-14 November, in Kobe (Japan) and online.

Applications are open until 8 August 2025. You can read more about this program on the TPAC 2025 registration page.

Sponsoring the funds

The TPAC Inclusion Fund and the W3C Invited Experts Support Fund contribute to W3C stakeholder strategy, as outlined in the 2025-2028 Strategic Objectives and Initiatives.

The amounts available for the funds are based on W3C member dues, funding from the Community Engagement Champions sponsorship plus donations.

We encourage you to contribute generously.

W3C released today the 2025 diversity report. As part of our commitment and continued focus on diversity and inclusion, since 2018 we report annually on gender and geographic diversity of W3C's governing bodies.

We would like to be a model of supporting diversity. As an international organization, we can see the immense value we gain from having greater gender diversity, and expertise from across multiple countries and cultures. The diversity of the whole world needs to be reflected, as 68% of the world is now online and as more people continue to access and use the web that we develop the standards of, here together at the Web Consortium.

We believe that more diversity means better representation, which leads to better and more inclusive design. Indeed, more background, more use cases, more edge cases, lead to a better web. More diversity also brings higher quality results.

W3C announced today the IAB/W3C Workshop on Age-Based Restrictions on Content Access, 7-9 October 2025, in London, UK.

The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are convening a workshop to examine the technical and architectural implications of different approaches to implementing age-based restrictions on access to online content.

Introduction

The young are often unprepared for the sorts of things they might find online.

Maturity, education, and the guidance of responsible adults can help children navigate online interactions, but age is often regarded as the best indicator of how able a person is to cope with exposure to content. 

Increasing interest is being shown in the implementation of regulation that restricts what content young people can access online. A recurring theme in these efforts is that it is no longer considered sufficient to rely on self-assertions of age. A number of jurisdictions have enacted—or are in the process of enacting—laws that take steps to provide stronger guarantees that children are not exposed to certain content. 

This workshop seeks to perform a thorough examination of the technical and architectural choices that are involved in solutions for age-based restrictions on access to content. We do not expect to identify a single candidate solution, even if that might be an ideal outcome. The goal is to build a shared understanding of the properties of various proposed approaches.

In general, access restrictions are achieved by selectively blocking or filtering. RFC 7754 (Technical Considerations for Internet Service Blocking and Filtering) provides a more general framework for how to think about restrictions on communications. This workshop will build on that work. In particular, it will seek to examine the specific technical considerations that apply when content is legally accessed by some people and restricted for others based primarily on their age.

Position Papers

Individuals interested in participating in this activity can indicate their interest by submitting a short position paper. Position papers do not represent either the IETF or W3C. In some cases, an expression of interest is sufficient. 

Topics of interest, as identified by the program committee, include:

• Surveys of the common features of regulation on age restrictions
• Analysis of the technical requirements that might apply
• Identification of other key factors to consider in the design of a technical architecture, including, but not limited to, privacy, equity of access, market dynamics (such as centralization), vulnerability to circumvention, cost, accuracy, jurisdiction/geolocation, and censorship
• Details of possible technical architectures, whether in whole or part:
  • For determining the age of people
  • For identifying content that might need to be restricted
  • For controlling access to identified content
• Comparisons of different technical architectures
• Examination of how technical architectures might interface with or rely upon regulation or other governance structures
• Feasibility of different approaches
• Exploration of the ramifications of choosing different technical architectures

Input on other relevant subjects is welcome. Papers that are submitted will be used in developing a workshop program. Position papers from those not able to attend the workshop are also encouraged. 

Submissions can be made by emailing papers to age-workshop-pc@iab.org. Participants can choose their preferred format, though short PDF submissions (around five A4 pages) are preferred. 

Submissions will be published with attribution unless the submission clearly indicates a preference that the submission be kept private or published anonymously.

Out of Scope

As technology does not exist in a vacuum, this will necessarily involve some discussion of how technology might interface with regulatory and governance regimes. Debate about what different choices might be made by regulators is out of scope. This includes choices about what content is restricted. The goal is only to examine how restrictions are implemented on a technical level. 

Age-based restrictions on access to content is very close to censorship. Discussion on the subject of censorship will be limited to discussions about how access restrictions can avoid being misused for censorship purposes.

The use of age-verification technology outside of an online context is not the primary focus of this workshop. For example, use of age in medical research or proof of age conditions on physically entering a club or bar. The workshop only seeks to examine the effect on the Internet and Web architecture. 

Participation

Participation in the workshop is by invitation only. This is an in-person meeting. Remote participation may be offered at the Program Committee's discretion. 

The workshop will be conducted under Chatham House rule, modified to include publication of the attendees and their affiliations, unless requested otherwise. The workshop will not have public recordings or minutes, but these might be taken to aid in the preparation of a report and subsequently discarded. 

As a joint workshop, the W3C code of conduct, the IETF code of conduct, and the IETF anti-harassment policy apply. Contributions are subject to the IETF intellectual property policy.

Summary Report

A report will be published after the conclusion of the workshop. That report will include:

• A list of attendees and primary affiliations (anonymity or exclusion can be requested)
• A summary of topics discussed including general trends and key viewpoints expressed
• Resolutions that participants reached, if any
• Recommendations for future research or standards development

Program

This workshop is a 2.5 day event. The bulk of the program will consist of a series of sessions that each focus on a specific topic.

Each session will start with a small number of presentations of material from participants based on their position papers. These presentations will help establish a common understanding of the topic in order to better facilitate discussion. The bulk of each session will be spent on discussion: first to clarify understanding, then to identify key issues, and—where appropriate—to explore potential paths to constructive outcomes. 

An outline of the program will be published prior to workshop commencement.

Logistics

• Paper submissions due by: 2025-08-08
• Invitations to attendees sent: 2025-08-15
• Workshop date: 2025-10-07 through 2025-10-09
• Workshop location: London, UK

Participants who need extra time to make travel arrangements should indicate this in their submission; we will endeavour to make an early determination about their submission if possible. 

Program Committee

The program committee can be contacted at: age-workshop-pc@iab.org.

• Christine Runnegar
• Hadley Beeman
• Mark Nottingham
• Martin Thomson
• Nick Doty
• Tara Whalen
• Tommy Pauly

The CSS Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of CSS Positioned Layout Module Level 4. This module defines coordinate-based positioning and offsetting schemes of CSS: relative positioning, sticky positioning, absolute positioning, and fixed positioning. It also defines the painting/rendering model of CSS.

The Federated Identity Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Digital Credentials. This API enables websites to request credentials, and for users to consent to return credentials that they carry around in digital wallets. The user agent (typically a browser) plays a critical role in empowering people to exchange verifiable information seamlessly on the web. The user experience of understanding what is being requested by a site, selecting from among relevant credentials, consenting to share the credentials, and getting new credentials from issuers (e.g., universities, the department of motor vehicles, a bank) must be excellent, and the browser is uniquely positioned to support that experience. 

Following extensive incubation, early implementations of the Digital Credentials API are now available from Google and Apple. People can view demos and conduct experiments, and the experimentation will inform the evolution of this specification. 

For more information, see the blog post: W3C Digital Credentials API publication: the next step to privacy-preserving identities on the web.

The PNG Working Group published Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification (Third Edition) as a W3C Recommendation. This document describes PNG (Portable Network Graphics), an extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of static and animated raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for GIF and can also replace many common uses of TIFF. Indexed-color, greyscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits.

The Third Edition adds Animated PNG and High Dynamic Range (HDR) PNG.

The Linked Web Storage Working Group has published a first draft Group Note of Linked Web Storage Use Cases. This document lists user stories and use-cases for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) specifications, as well as requirements identified as necessary to satisfy these use cases.

The Math Working Group has published MathML Core as a W3C Candidate Recommendation. This specification defines a core subset of Mathematical Markup Language, or MathML, that is suitable for browser implementation. MathML is a markup language for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text.

Comments are welcome via GitHub issues by 30 September 2025.

The Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) Working Group has published Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module 1.1 (DPUB-ARIA) and Digital Publishing Accessibility API Mappings 1.1 (DPUB-AAM) as W3C Recommendations.

DPUB-ARIA defines a set of ARIA roles to help assistive technology users navigate structural divisions of long-form digital documents, such as eBooks.

DPUB-AAM defines how user agents (such as eBook readers) map the DPUB-ARIA markup to platform accessibility APIs.

W3C opens today a new session of its CSS Basics course on W3Cx, where you can learn how to take your web pages from bland to bold with the power of CSS styling. This course is part of W3C's "Front-End Web Developer" Professional Certificate.

In this self-paced course, we guide you step-by-step in using the latest Web standards to structure your content and presentation like a professional. You will explore numerous CSS features to help you control the look and feel of your site such as colors, fonts and layout. By the end of the course, you should understand all the fundamental elements of CSS and how to use them effectively.

You can audit this course for free for 5 weeks after enrolling, or opt for the premium version with unlimited access, graded assessments, and a W3Cx certificate.

The W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) has published the Privacy Principles as a W3C Statement. Privacy is an essential part of the web. This document provides definitions for privacy and related concepts that are applicable worldwide as well as a set of privacy principles that should guide the development of the web as a trustworthy platform. People using the web would benefit from a stronger relationship between technology and policy, and this document is written to work with both.

W3C Statements provide a stable reference for documents not intended to be formal standards, but have been formally reviewed and are endorsed by W3C.

The CSS Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of CSS Functions and Mixins Module. This module defines the ability for authors to define custom functions, acting similar to parametrized custom properties. They can use the full power of CSS’s values and conditional rules. It also defines an early form of a similar idea for CSS rule mixins, allowing parametrized substitution of entire blocks of properties into other rules.

Today the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Working Group published Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification (Third Edition) as a W3C Proposed Recommendation. This document describes PNG (Portable Network Graphics), an extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of static and animated raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for GIF and can also replace many common uses of TIFF. Indexed-color, greyscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits.

PNG is designed to work well in online viewing applications, such as the World Wide Web, so it is fully streamable with a progressive display option. PNG is robust, providing both full file integrity checking and simple detection of common transmission errors. Also, PNG can store color space data for improved color matching on heterogeneous platforms.

This specification defines two Internet Media Types, image/png and image/apng.

The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published seven W3C Recommendations today, namely:

• Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0: Credentials are a part of our daily lives; driver's licenses are used to assert that we are capable of operating a motor vehicle, university degrees can be used to assert our level of education, and government-issued passports enable us to travel between countries. This specification provides a mechanism to express these sorts of credentials on the Web in a way that is cryptographically secure, privacy respecting, and machine-verifiable.
• Verifiable Credential Data Integrity 1.0: This specification describes mechanisms for ensuring the authenticity and integrity of Verifiable Credentials and similar types of constrained digital documents using cryptography, especially through the use of digital signatures and related mathematical proofs.
• Data Integrity EdDSA Cryptosuites v1.0: This specification describes a Data Integrity cryptographic suite for use when creating or verifying a digital signature using the twisted Edwards Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) and Curve25519 (ed25519).
• Data Integrity ECDSA Cryptosuites v1.0: This specification describes a Data Integrity Cryptosuite for use when generating a digital signature using the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA).
• Securing Verifiable Credentials using JOSE and COSE: This specification defines how to secure credentials and presentations conforming to the Verifiable Credential data model with JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE), Selective Disclosure for JWTs, and CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE) [RFC9052]. This enables the Verifiable Credential data model to be implemented with standards for signing and encryption that are widely adopted.
• Controlled Identifiers v1.0: A controlled identifier document contains cryptographic material and lists service endpoints for the purposes of verifying cryptographic proofs from, and interacting with, the controller of an identifier.
• Bitstring Status List v1.0: 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.

See also the W3C Press Release on this publication.

The Timed Text Working Group has published the DAPT Requirements as a Group Note. The document captures technical requirements for a profile of TTML2 for use in workflows related to dubbing and audio description of movies and videos, known as the Dubbing and Audio description Profile of TTML2 (DAPT).

The DAPT Requirements were previously published as a Draft Note in May 2022 and updated in October 2022.

The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 as an updated W3C Recommendation, incorporating the changes since the 12 December 2024 Recommendation. The 6 May 2025 publication addresses minor technical issues from the previous publication.

The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published Guidance on Applying WCAG 2.2 to Mobile Applications (WCAG2Mobile) as a first Draft Note. WCAG2Mobile describes how Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 principles, guidelines, and success criteria can be applied to mobile applications, including native mobile apps, mobile web apps, and hybrid apps using web components inside native mobile apps.

The W3C Advisory Committee, having nominated ten individuals, is invited today to vote until 30 May 2025 to fill seven seats in the W3C Advisory Board (AB) election. Please, read the statements of the nominees.

Created in March 1998, the Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance to the W3C Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. The Advisory Board also serves the W3C Members by tracking issues raised between Advisory Committee meetings, soliciting Member comments on such issues, and proposing actions to resolve these issues. The Advisory Board manages the evolution of the Process Document. The Advisory Board hears appeals of Member Submission requests that are rejected for reasons unrelated to Web architecture. For several years, the AB has conducted its work in a public wiki.

The elected Members of the Advisory Board participate as individual contributors and not representatives of their organizations. Advisory Board participants use their best judgment to find the best solutions for the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user.

The Pointer Events Working Group has published Pointer Events Level 3 as W3C Candidate Recommendation. The features in this specification extend or modify those found in Pointer Events, a W3C Recommendation that describes events and related interfaces for handling hardware-agnostic pointer input from devices including a mouse, pen, or touchscreen. For compatibility with existing mouse-based content, this specification also describes a mapping to fire Mouse Events for other pointer device types.

Comments are welcome via the GitHub issue by 27 May 2025.

The Devices and Sensors Working Group has published Compute Pressure Level 1 as W3C Candidate Recommendation. The Compute Pressure API provides a way for websites to react to changes in the CPU pressure of the target device, such that websites can trade off resources for an improved user experience. 

Comments are welcome via the GitHub issue by 22 May 2025.

The Web Application Security Working Group has published the following two First Public Working Drafts:

• Web Cryptography Level 2: This specification describes a JavaScript API for performing basic cryptographic operations in web applications, such as hashing, signature generation and verification, and encryption and decryption. Additionally, it describes an API for applications to generate and/or manage the keying material necessary to perform these operations. Uses for this API range from user or service authentication, document or code signing, and the confidentiality and integrity of communications.
• Subresource Integrity: This specification defines a mechanism by which user agents may verify that a fetched resource has been delivered without unexpected manipulation.

The Private Advertising Technology Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Privacy-Preserving Attribution: Level 1. This specifies a browser API for the measurement of advertising performance. The goal is to produce aggregate statistics about how advertising leads to conversions, without creating a risk to the privacy of individual web users. This API collates information about people from multiple web origins, which could be a significant risk to their privacy. To manage this risk, the information that is gathered is aggregated using an aggregation service that is trusted by the user-agent to perform aggregation within strict limits. Noise is added to the aggregates produced by this service to provide differential privacy. Websites may select an aggregation service from the list of approved aggregation services provided by the user-agent.