New Web Sustainability Guidelines Report
We’re excited to share that a draft report of this group’s Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSGs) has been published.
Inspired by W3C’s work on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the specification includes 93 guidelines with 232 success criteria, references, examples, and more. It represents nearly two years of work from about 50 volunteers across five different committees:
- UX Design
- Web Development
- Hosting & Infrastructure
- Product & Business Strategy
- Metrics
The guidelines reflect ESG principles outlined in the Sustainable Web Manifesto. They also align with GRI standards to help organizations more easily incorporate the impact of digital products and services into broader sustainability reporting initiatives.
Review the WSGs
Here are the details:
- Read the full draft specification
- Review the guidelines at-a-glance
- Find the full repository on GitHub
- Review slides for Wednesday’s launch event at TPAC
- Read W3C’s blog post about the guidelines
- Use sample social media posts to share with your network
Want to help us spread the word about the WSGs? Please consider sharing the links above with your networks, writing a blog post, or including them in presentations you give.
To that end, we’re presenting a guidelines walkthrough followed by a Q&A session on Wednesday, September 13th at TPAC. See the full TPAC schedule for details.
Feedback and Next Steps
We welcome your participation and feedback. Please post any issues you might find to our GitHub repository.
Also, this work has just begun. The report is a first draft. We’re still conducting monthly meetings about how best to improve and promote the guidelines. Everyone is welcome. Hope to see you at the next meeting on September 27th at 8am CT/3pm CEST.
Finally, and most importantly, a massive thank you to all who contributed. This is a monumental leap forward in advancing web sustainability. It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of those who volunteered their time and expertise.
With gratitude,
Alexander Dawson & Tim Frick
Sustainable Web Design CG Co-Chairs
Launch time is finally here! 🙂
Hello, Thanks for sharing this resource. I would be very interested to contribute to this community. Is the best way to leave a comment on your content on GitHub?
Hello Leah, You are more than welcome to join our community group. We have a frequently asked questions page about us and how people can get involved on our wiki. If you just wanted to provide feedback about the specification itself, you can just drop a comment / bug report (etc) via GitHub issues.
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Excellent news! Congratulations and thank you to everyone who contributed to this very important set of new guidelines!
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This is awesome, I will be reading closely.
It’s fantastic!
We’re all waiting for the results, and now it’s time to put these 93 guidelines into practice.
Thank you for your thorough work.
Congratulations! A big step towards a more sustainable web!
Great – these guidelines make websites future proof! Looking forward to using them and to see how they will set a new standard.
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Thank you for sharing this! I’m thrilled to see the progress made on the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSGs) draft report. It’s impressive to hear about the extensive collaboration and effort from the volunteers involved.
I would love to participate and contribute to the discussion on sustainable web design. Here us insight on sustainable web design – https://www.web-designlondon.co.uk/sustainable-web-design-shaping-a-greener-digital-future I look forward to joining the conversation.
Oh, that’s great. Useful information!
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Knowledge Representation
The easiest way to have an image is, to create a mindmap for Web Sustainability. Then People can have ideas to the dots. And a certification for Web Sustainability would be good.
Agreed. This is something that could be quickly generated with a Claude Artifact, or similar LLM.