Resources

Presentation:
Profiting from web standards (pdf 43 k)

External Links:

ISO (International Organization for Standardization)
This is a true standards body, with the resources to test products for standards compliance. They give their seal of approval to products that pass their tests. Along with computer and web-based technology standards, ISO also administers over 13,000 standards, ranging from standards for freight containers to the identification of musical works.

ANSI (American National Standards Institute)
Another wide-ranging standards organization, ANSI is well-known as being the keeper of ASCII, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange.

The Unicode Consortium
This group has developed and maintained the Unicode standard, which, as their website says, “...provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language.” Using Unicode makes it easier to develop multi-lingual versions of websites and documents.

The Internet Engineering Task Force
The IETF is the home of the Request For Comments (RFCs) that define the infrastructure of the Internet; these include such protocols as FTP, TCP/IP, and the format of email addresses.

ECMA (European Association for Standardizing Information and Communication Systems)
Formerly the European Computer Manufacturers Association, this group is responsible for many information-based technology standards, including ECMAScript, the standard version of JavaScript.

HCI/Usability Organizations

ASIS - American Society for Information Science and Technology

HFES - Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

SIGCHI - ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

CTA Resource - Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) education, documents, and an on-line community.

NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology