VI. How To?
6.3. Page Structure
6.3.2. Standards and W3C
"The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C's mission is: To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web." (Jacobs, 2008).
The W3C is responsible for establishing standards for web technologies, such as HTML, XHTML, CSS... The W3C also act towards web accessibility through the WAI which develops guidelines for web accessibility.
The use of standards will not make a website fully accessible, but it is generally a good step to start. Indeed, standards ensure that the languages uses to creates web pages are used properly, in the way they are intended to; they ensure a maximal interoperability and compatibility –even thought, because of some browser's limitations, compatibility cannot be fully guaranteed, in the future, with the development of more compliant software and the progressive disappearance of older browser, this compatibility will be more and more ensured.
Following HTML and XHTML standards, for example, insures that each image will have an alternative content, via the alt="" property; that each document will have a language specified for its content, allowing screen reader to switch to the right language; that any elements of layout will be defined with CSS, allowing those who need it to change the colours, or to deactivate the styles.