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 and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web. W3C's goal is for the Web to connect humanity in a way that makes access to knowledge more efficient and equitable.

Founded in 1994 by the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, W3C has successfully overseen processes of issue raising, design, consensus building and testing resulting in over 335 technical standards that make the Web work. Success stories include HTML5, XML, CSS and Web accessibility guidelines.

The Members and Staff of W3C, and its partners, are creating many more technologies that are designed to enable all Web users, from the elderly to the youngest generations, to share knowledge, expand commerce, and innovate.

W3C, as a non-profit organization, is hosted 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, Keio University in Japan, and Beihang University in China, and has additional Offices worldwide. Over 390 organizations are Members of the Consortium. For more information see http://www.w3.org/.