by Seth Dobbs, President and CEO, W3C
June 30, 2025
This public document is a streamlined version of the document approved by the W3C Board of Directors following W3C Team and Members iteration and review.
Credits: Images: Flaticon.com
This document also exists in an EPUB format.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) brings together global stakeholders to develop open standards that enable a World Wide Web that connects and empowers humanity. We are an international public-interest non-profit organization where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop web standards. We are committed to ensuring that the web works for everyone, and we exercise our social responsibilities through rigorous consideration of accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security.
The landscape of our work has changed significantly since W3C’s founding 30 years ago, in large part because of the work of our community.
Our work is more vital than ever in the face of this ongoing change.
The need for a single, open, interoperable platform that interconnects humanity remains strong and essential. Even with over 5 billion users on the web, the gap represented by the digital divide is increasing and should challenge us to consider what a “web for all” truly means.
Our history and our strengths can help us face these challenges and find opportunities to grow and expand our impact. In fact, centering our guiding star on our impact ensures we navigate these challenges and opportunities in a way that fulfills our mission.
We should work towards diversifying our support, finding new stakeholders that can contribute, and strengthening existing work with membership to rapidly adapt to and mitigate risks posed by our rapidly changing environment.
W3C plays an essential role creating trustworthy international standards that help drive to trustworthy global solutions.
We want our trusted gathering place to welcome more far-seeing technical experts and advocates about, and for, the web. We do this through creating a space where organizations and individuals gather where they will be respected, safe, heard, and can contribute to the growth and health of the web, and foster innovation of a web that is safe, accessible, and open to all.
W3C is at a crossroads. We have an immense opportunity to gain greater influence in the world, to gather new stakeholders, and to help direct the future. However, another path may lead us towards marginalization, in which policymakers and regulatory bodies make decisions uninformed by, and perhaps contrary to, our work; or where industries decide they would rather work without us, where open source projects create de facto standards at odds with our principles, or where discussions around new technologies that have implications and impact on the web are held outside of our sphere of influence.
If we get this right, our positive impact will help ensure we attract more people to shape and strengthen the web, and grow ourselves in the process so we can further the virtuous circle.
If we adopt the right strategy, we can truly realize our vision of making the web work, for everyone – a web designed for the good of its users, that is safe and secure.
To set W3C on the road to realizing this future, we have identified four strategic objectives :
| # | Icon | Objective | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | |
Solidify our structure | Ensure W3C is set up to be a more resilient, adaptive, and durable organization to deliver on our mission well into the future. |
| 2 | |
Enhance our impact | Direct our standards work through the lens of the impact it has on the world in support of our mission. |
| 3 | |
Diversify our support | Ensure we have access to appropriate resources to protect our future even in the face of change. |
| 4 | |
Broaden our footprint | Expand our reach to involve communities and community representatives to ensure a truly world-wide perspective. |
These long-term objectives are supported by five strategic initiatives (further defined in Section 5):
Making the web work, for everyone. W3C brings together global stakeholders to develop open standards that enable a World Wide Web that connects and empowers humanity.
The mission statement may be periodically refined and can be found here: https://www.w3.org/mission/
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization for the public good, this mission is of central importance. Specifically from our certificate of incorporation:
“The specific and primary purpose of the Corporation is to engage in charitable, educational and scientific activities within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the corresponding provision of any future United States Internal Revenue Law (the “Code”). The Corporation shall seek global participation in carrying out its mission, which it shall endeavor to conduct through the activities of its global team, membership, and community.”
At the time of writing, W3C’s Vision is still in draft and there is some risk that changes to this or lack of adoption by W3C Members could impact the overall strategic roadmap.
The entire version of W3C’s Vision is available here: https://www.w3.org/TR/w3c-vision/
W3C’s Vision for the World Wide Web:
Vision for W3C:
W3C leads the community in defining a World Wide Web that puts people first, by developing principles-based technical standards and guidelines.
The fundamental function of W3C is to provide an open forum where diverse voices from around the world and from different organizations and industries work together to evolve the web by building consensus on voluntary global standards for web technologies.
W3C embeds its core values and principles in the web’s architecture. To build a better future, W3C must rise even further to the challenge of improving the web’s fundamental integrity, while continuing to expand the web’s scope and reach. As the Ethical Web Principles state: “The web should empower an equitable, informed, and interconnected society.”
W3C’s values are captured in a formal statement, Ethical Web Principles, summarized here:
As a W3C Statement, the Ethical Web Principles document is endorsed by W3C and its Members and this list should be reasonably stable. The entire document can be found here: https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/
Challenges and opportunities are often two sides of the same coin, so rather than separating them, this section is organized by key topics and addresses both the challenges and opportunities together. Looking at the current state of things and the opportunities in front of us, it is more clear than ever that the world needs us and our leadership.
Increased scrutiny by policymakers, who may often lack the technical understanding of what they’re regulating, offers W3C a unique opportunity to inform and create alignment, and to be recognized for our expertise. When W3C was founded, we stood alone in the world of web and web-related standards; this is no longer the case. We must communicate clearly and effectively to maintain interest in, and highlight the value of, our work for the web community, regulators, and the general public.
The web is a vast platform that connects much of humanity and enables numerous global, regional, and local communities to interact, to the benefit of many. However, there is the risk of abuse and adjacent technologies resulting in complex issues that cannot be solved by a single organization or stakeholder.
Despite the web’s expanding reach, the digital divide remains: an estimated 30% of the world’s population is not online, and an even higher proportion live in areas with low connectivity or where they are not well-served by the web. We must meet these diverse populations where they are and meet their local needs, rather than seeking to bring them to the multi-gigabit streaming and shopping experiences.
The growing number of organizations taking an active role in the web presents us with opportunities to cooperate and collaborate with other SDOs, public interest groups, and technology-focused communities to garner support for fulfilling our mission and bring human-centric values into these conversations.
This cooperation will be vital in addressing the challenge of toxicity on the web, which reduces consumer confidence and trust in the web as a public good. With the mission of one interoperable web, we must define our role in educating and promoting awareness of ethical behaviors on the web.
To ensure the creation of durable and resilient specifications at the appropriate pace, we require an adaptive technology strategy that should provide guidance on when to ignore, embrace, or instigate change, and when to challenge changes that do not align with our mission and vision.
As a global organization serving a global mission, W3C must evaluate strategies to maintain the continuity of our work, establish new partnerships to diversify our support, and expand our global corporate structure and membership base.
For W3C to support our ability to deliver on our mission well into the future, we need to evolve towards a more resilient, adaptive, durable structure that is:
For W3C to have its desired impact, it is not enough to simply create numerous standards. We should measure our success by the impact our work has on the world, particularly in terms of fulfilling our mission and in achieving the work of our horizontals, according to a classical iteration process:
Achieving a global mission like W3C’s requires many resources including financial, labor/time, and technology/tools. Creating a more diversified support network will help ensure that we have access to appropriate resources to ensure our future even in the face of change.
Creating a web for all requires involving more of the world in our work. W3C needs to expand its reach to ensure that we are involving communities and engaging with community representatives that enable us to fulfill this mission. We also need to reach out to, and involve ourselves, where work is being done that impacts the web.
The strategic roadmap lays out the initiatives along a timeline using three horizons. This is not a precise plan, but rather a prioritization of focus over broad time periods. Each horizon is one to one-and-a-half years long, so three horizons gives us a view of three to four-and-a-half years, and opportunities to reevaluate our strategy during the second horizon.
The next step to operationalize the plan includes looking at resourcing, ownership, high level timelines and prioritizing commitments for Horizon 1, which may lead to shifting some work to later horizons.
As initiatives are completed, this roadmap will be revised to reflect key efforts that emerge from those efforts.
This initiative focuses on ensuring that our underlying structure and ways of working are durable and effectively enable all of our future work. This is about ensuring our methodology (W3C Process Document) and supporting workflow are fit for purpose, receiving inputs from other initiatives to help provide goals for ongoing evaluation of our Process, corporate processes, and policies.
This initiative supports the strategic objective “Solidify our structure”.
| Priority | Activity | Short Description | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Process evaluation and evolution | Evaluate concerns over burdensome nature of Process and change appropriately. Identify opportunities to change with clear measures. Consider piloting ideas before making broader changes. | 1 |
| 1 | Competitive analysis | Evaluate the pros and cons of other SDOs process, governance structure, etc. and compare them to W3C. | 1 |
| 1 | Compliance program | Ensure we have appropriate compliance programs in place for operation. | 1 |
| 2 | Legal hardening, policy and contract evaluation | Evaluate policies, contracts with view to protect consortium. | 2 |
| 3 | Partner strategy | Evolve our Partner strategy to serve future needs of the organization. | 3 |
Creating and leveraging an impact framework that enables us to qualitatively and quantitatively define, analyze, and communicate our impact is essential to driving us forward.
This initiative supports the strategic objectives “Solidify our structure” and “Enhance our impact”.
| Priority | Activity | Short Description | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Identify impacts | Clearly define the impacts W3C wants to make on the world, likely using the lens of our horizontals. | 1 |
| 2 | Develop measures and proxy measures | Develop means for measuring impacts defined in “Identify impacts”. Direct measures may be very difficult to develop so proxy measures should be considered. | 1 |
| 2 | Clarify impact of efforts | Using measures and proxy measures, document the impacts we are and are not making. | 2 |
| 3 | Identify targets | As we start understanding trends of our measures, identify concrete targets. | 2 |
| 3 | Develop impact strategy | Based on concrete targets, develop a detailed strategy to reach targets. | 3 |
A major component of this strategic initiative is reinforcing existing and building out new stakeholders. developing a cohesive plan to expand our global footprint using an impact-based approach for engaging with unserved/underserved regions, considering how we enable a web that meets the constraints of a region and enables local creators, providers to build.
This initiative supports all Strategic Objectives.
| Priority | Activity | Short Description | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Membership strategy | Recommend changes to membership structure and fees; methods to enhance member engagement, etc. | 3 |
| 1 | Stakeholder analysis framework | Evaluate current and potential stakeholders based on type of stakeholder, what they can provide in terms of contribution to standards, funding, and contribution to understanding problem space. Prioritize. | 1 |
| 1 | Communication and messaging strategy | Develop a detailed strategy for each stakeholder. | 1 |
| 2 | Identify and analyze target regions | Identify concrete targets based on where there is growing or existing tech expertise in unrepresented regions, where the web is effectively absent, what the impact of working with this region is, where underserved sub-communities within well-served regions are. | 1 |
| 2 | Prioritize target regions | Prioritize 2-3 initial target regions. | 1 |
| 2 | New stakeholder outreach | Execute on prioritized communication strategies. | 3 |
| 2 | Analyze current means of outreach | Analyze and evaluate the function of Chapters, Evangelists, and Membership to determine the best path for connecting with target regions. | 1 |
| 3 | Anti-stakeholder analysis | Develop a framework to research and understand criticism of the state of the web and evaluate opportunities to change. | 2 |
Our technology strategy should focus on ensuring we are able to effectively navigate and influence technology evolution and newly emerging technologies.
This initiative supports the strategic objectives “Solidify our structure” and “Enhance our impact”.
| Priority | Activity | Short Description | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foundational technology strategy | Clarify goals and outcomes of a successful technology strategy, particularly highlighting how to appropriately evaluate emerging web and web-adjacent technologies. Also develop indicators for when and how these technologies should be addressed by W3C. | 1 |
| 2 | Execution & refinement | Identify measures of success and evaluate execution of technology strategy. | 1 |
Governments and policymakers are creating policies and regulations that impact the web in certain regions of the world. W3C has decades of commitment to ensuring that the web is for everyone through our rigorous emphasis on accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security.
This initiative supports the strategic objectives “Enhance our impact” and “Broaden our footprint”.
| Priority | Activity | Short Description | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create a policy advisory task force | Establish a task force combining team and membership with the goal of defining regions where we feel policymakers and regulators could benefit from W3C’s standards, insights, and expertise and where there is urgent need (active policies and regulations being considered.) | 1 |
| 2 | Build initial relationships in target regions | Identify 2-3 target regions and work towards establishing relationships. | 1 |
| 3 | Develop global policy engagement strategy | Iterating on initial experience, develop broader strategy. | 2 |
| 3 | Policy briefs | Explore the value of periodic policy briefs to raise awareness of ongoing changes in the regulatory landscape | 2 |
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has had a profound impact through its broad mandate and comprehensive methodology. Since its founding 30 years ago, W3C has played a pivotal role in developing trustworthy global solutions by establishing international standards that rigorously prioritize accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security. This ethos has made the web the single, open, interoperable platform that connects humanity.
To navigate challenges and opportunities effectively, W3C will focus on its impact. By building upon this impact, W3C aims to attract more people to shape and strengthen the web. Through continuous growth, W3C can further the virtuous circle. To increase its impact, W3C will prioritize four long-term strategic objectives: diversifying support, enhancing impact, broadening footprint, and solidifying structure.
In support of these objectives, W3C will monitor five initiatives over the next two to three years: structural evolution, impact framework, stakeholder outreach strategy, technology strategy, and policy engagement.
In summary, W3C should work towards diversifying our support, identifying new stakeholders who can contribute, strengthening existing membership work to rapidly adapt to and mitigate risks posed by the rapidly evolving environment, and enhancing our organization’s structure and operations.