Spend any time at all on website design and you’ll quickly learn of an organization called W3C – or World Wide Web Corsortium. You’ll likely hear that using the W3C standards to build and design your website are necessary to ensure compatibility with current web standards. I hate to burst your bubble, but there’s no requirement to follow W3C standards.
That’s not to say that the W3C hasn’t benefited the Internet at all. Headed by the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium does work hard to establish open lines of communication between webmasters and others who use the Internet. In fact, many of their suggestions are well worth listening to. But if you build a website that doesn’t comply with W3C standards, if you are using HTML code that can be read by browsers then you will likely build a website that is accessible by Internet users. You don’t need W3C approval.
The code that you’ll see at the top of some source code behind websites, you know that code that says your site is approved by W3C, it’s not really necessary. It is nice to have. It can build trust in your site. But if you’re missing it, no big deal. The real issue is to build a website that is accessible and provides your site visitors with benefits.
Related posts:
- Are W3C Standards Necessary?
- Is Custom Web Design Really ‘Custom’?
- Is Your Web Design W3C Compliant?
- The 3 Kinds Of Content
- What Does ‘Content Is King’ Mean?