The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium, headed by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, and is staffed with public works members around the world in order to help the Web reach its highest potential. They publish a list of standards, also known as recommendations, developed by consensus with the intention to ensure the high technical and editorial quality of websites. Compliance to these standards is important because it helps to make certain that web pages and other digital documents are usable by the widest possible audience. To see whether or not you are meeting these standards with your web pages, check out their validator here. Besides making sure that your website is accomplishing the most appropriate goals set forth by the world’s Internet leaders, there are several other benefits to W3C compliance when it comes to your site.
Greater accessibility
W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide a set of guidelines for making web pages accessible to people with disabilities. By following the, it allows users that utilize screen readers or have greater difficulty using websites to be able to more easily access the information and enjoy the content. Providing alternative text for images, using clear and simple language, and allowing keyboard navigation for users who may not be able to use a mouse are all ways that the W3C recommends to increase accessibility.
Better search engine optimization
Your site’s W3C validation allows you to simplify and improve the code used on your web pages, improving page load speeds. Search engine spiders crawl and index the content of each web page, and the code used in its construction, taking note of how quickly the page loads; therefore, the faster the page loads, the better the search engine ranks the site. A lot of the W3C’s standards directly coincide with strategies meant to improve your search engine optimization, like using proper heading structures.
More mobile-friendly
W3C’s standards help ensure that websites are designed to work well on mobile devices. With mobile browsing increasing rapidly, website owners need to maximize the usability of their websites on smartphones and tablets, using a variety of techniques including responsive web design or mobile-first design which can both assist in making sure you’re compliant. To read more about device adaptation, click here. Some of the highlighted standards include using CSS media queries and viewport-relative CSS units like vw and vh.
W3C compliance guarantees that a website remains accessible, optimized for search engines, compatible with different browsers, and will keep a better user experience for the future, making it a good practice that your website is designed, developed and maintained to meet the W3C standards. If you are looking to redo your website or looking for a web designer to create your site with all these guidelines in mind, please reach out to RainStorm and their team of web development professionals providing outstanding customer service since 1999.
