News Release: World Wide Web Consortium Marks Completion of Quality Assurance Working Group with New Recommendation

Today, W3C's Quality Assurance Working Group has completed its work with
the approval of the Specification Guidelines, giving W3C Working Groups
and other standards development organizations a blueprint for creating
implementable specifications. It is the latest achievement by the
Quality Assurance Activity, which includes the creation of validators,
test suites and other software tools. For more information, please
contact Janet Daly <janet@w3.org> at +1 617 253 5884.


World Wide Web Consortium Marks Completion of Quality Assurance Working
Group with New Recommendation

"Specification Guidelines" aid in the creation of implementable
technical standards

Web Resources:

This press release
   in English: http://www.w3.org/2005/08/qa-pressrelease.html.en
   in French: http://www.w3.org/2005/08/qa-pressrelease.html.fr
   in Japanese: http://www.w3.org/2005/08/qa-pressrelease.html.ja

Specification Guidelines: http://www.w3.org/TR/qaframe-spec/

The Quality Assurance Homepage: http://www.w3.org/QA/

The Matrix of Test Suites, Validators and Tools:
      http://www.w3.org/QA/TheMatrix

________________________________________

http://www.w3.org/ -- 17 August 2005 -- The Quality Assurance (QA)
Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) concludes its work
this month with the completion of the Specification Guidelines W3C
Recommendation, a document which provides clear instruction to writers
and editors on creating implementable technical specifications. The QA
Interest Group is continuing W3C's four-year effort in outreach through
a variety of mailing lists and maintenance of online tools.

"Over the years, we have heard developers call for both standards and
ways to test adherence to standards," explained Steve Bratt, W3C COO.
"The W3C Quality Assurance Activity led the way in the development of
guidelines and tools, helping our Working Groups create implementable
specifications, and in turn helping software developers understand and
implement W3C technologies. QA's products will be integral resources
that ensure the work of W3C's Working Groups is of high quality."

Quality Assurance is Essential to Standards Development and Deployment

W3C launched the QA Activity in 2001, following a successful Workshop,
with these goals: to improve W3C specifications by offering guidelines
to W3C groups, by reviewing draft specifications for adherence to these
guidelines, and by helping W3C groups develop test suites and other
tools to promote interoperable implementations.

W3C's QA Working Group Highlights Good Practices in Document Series

Since that time, the QA Working Group produced six documents, including
today's new Recommendation, the Specification Guidelines. By identifying
both requirements and "good practices," the Specification Guidelines
help both W3C and other specification authors create and describe
technologies in ways that make it easier for developers to implement
them as intended. The QA Working Group also put together templates for
writing conformance clauses as well as full specifications.

In addition, the QA Working Group has published the QA Framework Primer,
QA Test FAQ, the Variability in Specifications Working Draft, and The QA
Handbook. One of the group's more famous and useful documents is the W3C
Quality Assurance Matrix, a list of over 100 W3C specifications, with
links to conformance clauses, test suites and validators.

W3C's Quality Assurance Effort Supported by W3C Members, Developer Community

W3C's QA efforts had the support of W3C Members and the broader
development community from the start. Since its inception, the Activity
included participants from Boeing, Microsoft, NIST, The Open Group,
RealNetworks, and Sun Microsystems.

As many in the Web community are interested in creating implementable
specifications, but may not be able to make the kind of time commitments
required for successful Working Group participation, W3C also formed the
QA Interest Group. This group has both public and Member involvement,
and has been critical in developing efforts that encourage
better-written specifications, test suites, and validators. Through
participation on the W3C public evangelist mailing list, Web designers
and developers the world over have contributed practical and up-to-date
ideas for making better specifications and educational materials. The
software development work launched by the Interest Group will also
continue, ensuring a reliable set of tools and validators.

Contact America --
Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613

Contact Europe --
Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94

Contact Asia --
Yasuyuki Hirakawa <chibao@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run
by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT
CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and
Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in
Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of
information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and
various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new
technology. To date, nearly 400 organizations are Members of the
Consortium. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

Received on Wednesday, 17 August 2005 13:55:02 UTC