Published on AccessAbility (http://accessibility.psu.edu)

Web Standards

Web standards is the set of formal standards, recommendations (W3C terminology meaning standards), specifications, and body of best practices and widely used conventions used for building your Web pages. It includes:

HTML 3.2,4.01,5.0;XHTML 1.0, 2.0
RDF, OWL and the semantic web
microformats
ARIA, WCAG 1 and 2
CSS
JavaScript
Web Services and ReST APIs
Unicode and other character encoding standards

There are many reasons to adopt standards in your Web site, whether your site is hand-built with and editor, or you use a content management system.

Why Adopt Web Standards?

Adopting Web standards makes good business sense

A commitment to support Web standards is an important action towards implementing good business practices. Web standards provides:

lower development, maintenance and network costs
improved usability and accessibility
sharing of content and applications in multiple contexts
works with all popular technologies and software platforms

This is sufficient for creating a business case supporting adoption of standards. But making the case for standards to constituent groups may be helped by more detail and context.

The Web Developers' Point of View

Web standards allow for better code by enabling separation of concerns: data, presentation and behavior. Better coding reduces development and maintenance costs, increases code reuse, and allows the benefits of specialization.

HTML, XHTML or XML markup for content and semantic structure
cascading style sheets for visual design and device formating
JavaScript for application behavior and user interface enhancements
quality assurance and testing

The Users' Point of View

Web standards make web documents more accessible to all types of users and machine agents, and more visible to search engines. Standards compliant Web resources:

are readable by all browsers and user agents, and more accessible for all users
personalize and optimize presentation with style sheets
documents are smaller, resulting in faster page loads
search engines index content more effectively
semantic Web technologies provide context and improve quality of search results, knowledge delivery and data mashups

The Webmaster's Point of View

Web standards will ease the burdens of webmasters by allowing them to focus more on content and less on design and development issues. Following standards makes Web administration easier and improves user experience.

Web standards can be implemented in all content management systems
consistent document template markup allows site-wide style sheets
site-wide style sheets allow incremental design changes and flexibility
automation of processes allows repurposing time, and better uses your professional skills
JavaScript-based technologies are applied site-wide for consistent user and application interaction
accessibility and usability are more easily accomplished and maintained
standards supports assistive technology

The Decision-maker and Stakeholders' Point of View

Using web standards reduces the costs of development, maintenance and operation of web sites. Standards-compliant sites are more efficient and cost less to maintain.

management of information architecture, content, and design is easier and lowers costs
shorter redesign cycles
smaller file size reduces bandwidth costs
structured content improves search engine results
automation of processes reduces cost and improves quality
publishing system can comply with legal requirements and provide alternative reading formats (e.g., RSS)
useful life of content is increase through reuse

HTML 5

When work began on the next revision of HTML in 2004, experts predicted widespread adoption would take more than a decade. However, early adoption by browser publishers and service giants Google and Yahoo, among others, have enabled practical applications of HTML 5 in 2009. The design community is rushing to demonstrate that the new language can be used now.

HTML 5 replaces HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1. It supports rich applications through introduction of new elements and attributes; an extensive set of new behaviors comparable to Adobe flash and flex, Microsoft Silverlight, and others; offline storage; document editing; and many other application-enabling features. Another revolutionary aspect of HTML 5 is its greater semantic expressiveness, thereby enabling greater accessibility for users relying on assistive technology and automated machine agents.

Authoritative References

HTML 5 Specification drafts and documents [1]
HTML 5 Language Reference [2]
HTML 5 Design Principles [3]