Web Standardization Initiative

India is very rich and wide in regard to Linguistic Diversity. India has 22 constitutionally recognized languages and 12 scripts. In India, there is One Language originated from many scripts and many Languages is originated from one script and they are culturally different depending on the region though using the same script for different languages. Even there is wide difference for the same language across different country. There are also major issues related to Indian Languages like complex orthographic representation, non uniform mapping between script and languages, the formation of complex glyph sets and other NLP problems. To accelerate the percolation ICT in Indian languages, it is necessary to enable web technology in all 22 Indian languages. This requires addressing internationalization challenges with respect to present and future web standards.

The vision of WSI is to enable all Web related standards with 22 Indian languages so that we can achieve seamless Web for every Indian. The objective of this Initiative is to promote and adoption of various internationalization web and internet recommendations/ Best practices among developers, application builders, and standards setters, and to encourage inclusion of stakeholder organizations in the creation of future recommendations.

WSI is currently focusing on the development of Internationalization requirements w.r.t all 22 Indian languages in the following areas:

1. CSS & Digital publishing
2. Mobile web
3. Semantic Web
4. Speech technology
5. WOFF (Web Open Font Format)
6. Internationalization Tag Set

Under WSI, W3C Indic Text layout task force (http://www.w3.org/International/groups/indic-layout/) has been constituted and is working directly under the W3C Internationalization Working Group. The Chairperson of this Task force is Ms. Swaran lata. The aim of this task force is to collect information about specific use cases in India for technologies defined in W3C specifications for Indian languages, and to report the results of its activities as a group back to the Internationalization Core Working Group, as well as to other relevant groups and to the W3C members and the community.

WSI is produced W3C First Public Working Draft of Indic Layout Requirements (http://w3c.github.io/ilreq/) on behalf of the Indic Layout Task Force, part of the W3C Internationalization Interest Group and Digital publishing Interest Group.

The Web Standardization activity is a single platform for initiatives concerned with improving internationalization and localization of the web Standards in India.

For more details click here.