Accessibility Guidelines Working Group - IPR
Licensing Commitments
Participants in this group have made certain licensing commitments by joining the group. In addition to these Participants, non-participating W3C Member may have made licensing commitments.
W3C Members not participating in this group who wish to make the same licensing commitments for specifications developed by this group may do so through a Join form for licensing commitments from non-participating Members.
Other parties making a substantive contribution to the work of the group need to make a Royalty-Free patent commitment, as described in section 6.2.6 of the Process. Team contacts will provide instructions for recording the non-participant licensing commitment before the contribution can be accepted.
Participation
- W3C Member Organizations
-
- Adobe
- Amazon
- British Broadcasting Corporation
- CANTON CONSULTING
- Centre for Inclusive Design
- College Board
- Consensys
- Crawford Technologies
- CVS Pharmacy, Inc.
- DAISY Consortium
- Deque Systems, Inc.
- EcomBack
- eyeo GmbH
- Fabasoft
- Fondazione LIA
- Fundacion CTIC
- Google LLC
- Green Technology Co
- HM Government
- IBM Corporation
- Indeed
- Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica
- Intel Corporation
- Kadokawa Corporation
- King's College London
- Knowbility
- Level Access
- Library of Congress
- Logius
- Mada Center, Qatar
- Microsoft Corporation
- Ministry of Digital Affairs, Taiwan
- MITRE Corporation
- Navy Federal Credit Union
- NCR Voyix
- Netcetera
- NIC.br - Brazilian Network Information Center
- Nomensa
- Oracle Corporation
- Rakuten Group, Inc.
- Rhonda Weiss Center for Accessible IDEA Data
- Salesforce
- SAP SE
- Shenzhen Accessibility Research Association
- Shopify
- Siteimprove
- Taiwan Digital Publishing Forum
- TetraLogical Services Ltd
- The New York Times
- Thomson Reuters Corp.
- TPGi
- Understood
- UnitedHealth Group
- Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
- University of Illinois
- University of Oxford
- UsableNet
- Wikimedia Foundation
- Wix.com Ltd.
Note: Log in to see links to organizations if you have member access
- Invited Experts
-
- Jake Abma
- Poornima Badhan Subramanian
- Bruce Bailey
- Quintin Balsdon
- Mike Beganyi
- Helen Burge
- Tiffany Burtin
- Laura Carlson
- DJ Chase
- Victoria Clark
- Azlan Cuttilan
- Phil Day
- Jan Jaap de Groot
- Jennifer Delisi
- Rachele DiTullio
- E.A. Draffan
- Kathy Eng
- David Fazio
- Ashley Firth
- Detlev Fischer
- Mike Gifford
- Tim Gravemaker
- Jamie Herrera
- Sarah Horton
- Joe Humbert
- Bram Janssens
- Duff Johnson
- Aashutosh K
- Rashmi Katakwar
- John Kirkwood
- Julian Kittelson-Aldred
- Raja Kushalnagar
- Todd Libby
- David MacDonald
- Audrey Maniez
- Jan McSorley
- Rebecca Monteleone
- Sam Ogami
- Kimberly Patch
- Mike Pluke
- Gleidson Ramos
- Graham Ritchie
- John Rochford
- Karla Rubiano
- Cybele Sack
- Janina Sajka
- Roberto Scano
- Lisa Seeman-Horwitz
- Shawn Thompson
- Makoto Ueki
- Alain Vagner
- Gregg Vanderheiden
- Gert-Jan Vercauteren
- Frankie Wolf
- Illai Zeevi
- Team members
-
- Shawn Lawton Henry
- Daniel Montalvo
- Ruoxi Ran
- Tzviya Siegman
- Kevin White
See also the list of individuals participating in this group.
The Call for Participation for this group was announced on 2023-11-03; see the Patent Policy FAQ for information about continued participation before re-joining the group.
Specifications published by the Group
The following is the list of specifications produced by the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group that have associated disclosures obligations, and possible licensing obligations under the W3C Patent Policy.
Patent Disclosures and Claim Exclusions
This section summarizes patent disclosures by participants in W3C's Accessibility Guidelines Working Group as required by section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
W3C takes no position regarding either:
- the validity or scope of any intellectual property right or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology, or
- the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available from those not participating in this group.
Where disclosure is required by a W3C Member, the AC Representative makes the disclosure.
Anyone else may also make a disclosure.
Known Disclosures
| Disclosures for Accessibility Requirements for People with Low Vision | Licensing | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pending unpublished #167 disclosed on 2019-06-06 |
| Disclosures for Challenges with Accessibility Guidelines Conformance and Testing, and Approaches for Mitigating Them | Licensing | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Laid-open/published patent application #00001 (00001) disclosed on 2023-04-30 |
| Disclosures for W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3.0 | Licensing | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pending unpublished #174 disclosed on 2021-05-05 | No Patent Policy Obligations |
How to Make a Patent Disclosure
W3C Members and Invited Experts (including those not participating in this group) wishing to disclose a patent for any specification produced by the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group should use the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group patent disclosure form.
Disclosures from the general public should be sent to the W3C Staff.
For specifications developed under the W3C Patent Policy, parties that commit to the W3C Royalty-Free Licensing Terms are not required to disclose patents. Any party (not just the Working Group Participants) may commit to the W3C Royalty-Free Licensing Terms and may do so by following the instructions in the next section.
Claim Exclusions
Only Accessibility Guidelines Working Group participants may exclude patent claims concerning specifications developed under the W3C Patent Policy, per section 4 of the W3C Patent Policy. To make an exclusion, participants should use the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group patent claim exclusion form, but only after first disclosing the patent.
Exclusion Opportunities
The Patent Policy FAQ provides detailed information about exclusion opportunities, that is, when a Working Group Participant can exclude a patent claim.
Each exclusion opportunity has a duration. See section 4.1 of the W3C Patent Policy for information on how the exclusion deadline is calculated.
At each exclusion opportunity, Participants may exclude patent claims with respect to a body of text. The Exclusion Draft is the reference body of text for the current exclusion opportunity.
Note: At each new exclusion opportunity (e.g., in the case of a second Candidate Recommendation Snapshot), exclusions are only with respect to differences since the previous reference body of text. These differences may be less than an entire document, and the summary below does not address that granularity. Also, in some edge cases (discussed in the FAQ), Participants, depending on when they joined the Working Group, will have different Exclusion Drafts; the summary below does not reflect this case.
Exclusion Opportunities
- Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Rules Format 1.1
- Call for exclusion started on 2024-06-18, opportunity until 2024-11-15
Previous exclusion opportunitiesView previous exclusion opportunities
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
- Call for exclusion started on 2022-09-06, opportunity until 2022-11-05
- W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3.0
- Call for exclusion started on 2021-01-21, opportunity until 2021-06-20
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
- Call for exclusion started on 2020-02-27, opportunity until 2020-07-26
- Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Rules Format 1.0
- Call for exclusion started on 2019-04-16, opportunity until 2019-06-15
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
- Call for exclusion started on 2018-01-30, opportunity until 2018-03-31
- Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Rules Format 1.0
- Call for exclusion started on 2017-04-06, opportunity until 2017-09-03
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
- Call for exclusion started on 2017-02-28, opportunity until 2017-07-28
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
- Call for exclusion started on 2007-12-11, opportunity until 2008-02-09
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
- Call for exclusion started on 2006-04-27, opportunity until 2006-06-26
Additional Licensing Information
As described in section 5 of the W3C Patent Policy:
All Working Group participants are encouraged to provide a contact from which licensing information can be obtained and other relevant licensing information. Any such information will be made publicly available along with the patent disclosures for the Working Group in question.
Patent holders may:
- Provide additional licensing information for documents produced by this Working Group
- Provide the same additional licensing information for all documents with associated licensing obligations produced by this Working Group, or
- Provide additional licensing information for any W3C document with associated licensing obligations produced by any W3C Working Group under the W3C Patent Policy.
Such licensing information should be sent to the W3C Staff.
Please recall that, per section 5 of the W3C Patent Policy, a W3C Royalty-Free license:
may not impose any further conditions or restrictions on the use of any technology, intellectual property rights, or other restrictions on behavior of the licensee, but may include reasonable, customary terms relating to operation or maintenance of the license relationship such as the following: choice of law and dispute resolution.