Standards are omnipresent and play a vital role in our lives. Standards ensure the safety and reliability of our transportation, construction, communication, and power. Technical communicators benefit from standards every time we use the Web or write Web content, create accessible content, or work with XML. This issue provides insights into three standards bodies that are relevant to technical communication and are supported by STC members: the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), OASIS, and ISO. A goal I had as guest editor of this issue was not just to highlight the standards themselves, but also to provide readers with a glimpse into the standards creation process, the real people who develop standards, and the compromises that are often made during standards development.
An article on DITA 1.2 was written by the editor of the specification and current co-chair of the DITA Technical Committee, Kristen Eberlein. Eberlein played a major role in the development of the DITA 1.2 specification throughout the three-year process. My contribution to this issue, an article on HTML5, describes how the W3C lost sight of the needs of users and implementers in its original efforts to recast the HTML language in XML, and how the efforts of a breakaway group eventually led to the next generation of the HTML language. The article on ISO standards for software documentation by Annette Reilly describes standards for the entire software documentation lifecycle and final documentation product. According to Reilly, these standards can guide software companies in providing documentation that is “consistent, complete, accurate, and usable.” Rounding out the issue, Neil Perlin writes about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, which provides best practices and guidelines for the fastest-growing segment of Web-enabled devices, including smartphones and tablets.
Many standards have some relevance to technical communication. We only had room for a handful in this issue of Intercom. Some others include:
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DocBook—An OASIS standard that specifies XML markup for technical books and papers, www.docbook.org/.
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ePub—Standard for electronic book (e-book) publishing, International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), www.openebook.org/.
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Plain language—U.S. Federal Government Plain Language Guidelines, www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/bigdoc/fullbigdoc.pdf.
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ARIA—Accessibility for Web content and Web applications, www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria.php.
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U.S. Section 508—Accessibility standards for U.S. government-funded electronic and information technology projects; the name is derived from the 1998 amendment to the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973, www.section508.gov.
There is often a dearth of user-facing content about standards—primers, tutorials, overviews, and other supporting materials. Do you find a particular standard to be interesting and important? Write a tutorial, article, blog post, or book about it. Help others to understand the standard, how to use it, and why it is important.
Some standards gain acceptance and some don’t. Public support and education often makes much of the difference.
—Alan Houser
