• Lead the technical evolution of the World Wide Web.
• Has developed more than fifty technical specifications for the Web's infrastructure.
• Lay the foundations for the next generation of the Web to help make it a robust, scalable, and adaptive infrastructure for a world of information.

"W3C concentrates its efforts on three principle tasks:

1. Vision: W3C promotes and develops its vision of the future of the World Wide Web. Contributions from several hundred dedicated researchers and engineers working for Member organizations, from the W3C Team (led by Tim Berners-Lee, the Web's inventor), and from the entire Web community enable W3C to identify the technical requirements that must be satisfied if the Web is to be a truly universal information space.
2. Design: W3C designs Web technologies to realize this vision, taking into account existing technologies as well as those of the future.
3. Standardization: W3C contributes to efforts to standardize Web technologies by producing specifications (called "Recommendations") that describe the building blocks of the Web. W3C makes these Recommendations (and other technical reports) freely available to all."

Approximately 360 organizations.

"Consensus is one of the most important principles by which W3C operates. When resolving issues and making decisions, W3C strives to achieve unanimity of opinion. Where unanimity is not possible, W3C reaches decisions by considering the ideas and viewpoints of all participants, whether W3C Members, invited experts, or the general public."

"W3C Organization" (as visited on 18 June 2004)

The Internet is central to W3C's mission. "W3C's long term goals for the Web are:

1. Universal Access: To make the Web accessible to all by promoting technologies that take into account the vast differences in culture, languages, education, ability, material resources, access devices, and physical limitations of users on all continents;
2. Semantic Web: To develop a software environment that permits each user to make the best use of the resources available on the Web;
3. Web of Trust: To guide the Web's development with careful consideration for the novel legal, commercial, and social issues raised by this technology."