What is TAG?
I’ve been working in Web Standards for at least half of my career now, and it’s been a nice ride. It’s a line of work that aligns with my values in terms of contributing to the safety, openness and accessibility of the web. I was also recently selected for appointment to the W3C’s Technical Architecture Group by the W3C team, for which I’ll serve for two years (if nothing major happens), so now feels like as good a time as any to start my ‘Questions About Standards’ series, where folks send me questions related to standards and I answer them here.
What is the Technical Architecture Group?
TAG aka the Technical Architecture Group, is an elected group within the W3C which aims to oversee specifications created within the standards organisation. The group does this by:
- Providing design reviews on draft specifications
- Producing documents such as
- Hosting/organising developer outreach events
TAG members do this work in addition to their day jobs and are typically funded by their member organisations. However, some members are invited experts and don’t receive funding from member organisations.
How does it relate to the rest of standards work?
The work TAG does is directly related to the rest of the work happening in the W3C as TAG approval of a draft specification is required before it can become a standard. Every draft specification that wants to become a standard has to request a design review by the TAG at some point in its process. Members of the TAG review the specification for certain requirements such as (but not limited to):
- Privacy and security
- Who benefits/is disadvantaged?
- Are there accessibility concerns/considerations?
- Is the specification interoperable and are there already implementers?
- Is there consensus from major browsers?
The group works together to give design reviews and while the review may seem like it comes from the one or two people who comment on the GitHub issue, it’s a joint effort and nothing gets posted without consensus.
Similarly, the documents that the TAG produces, like The Ethical Web and The Web Platform Principles, help guide editors and groups in creating specifications that take web browser users and developers into consideration at every step. Specifications which request design reviews but don’t adhere to the principles are unlikely to get TAG approval.
You can follow what’s happening on TAG or specific design reviews on GitHub.
If you have questions about the W3C and web standards you'd like answered, you can email me at lola@lolaslab.co with the subject "Web Standards Questions".