Segala Joins Support for W3C Mobile Web Candidate Recommendations

Segala Joins Support for W3C Mobile Web Candidate Recommendations

Encourages Industry to adopt Best Practices and Guidelines for multi-platform “One Web” Development

London, England, July 8th 2006 – Segala, a worldwide provider of mobile and web testing, certification and trustmark services with global headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, announced today its support for the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Candidate Recommendation “Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0” (http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/). The Candidate Recommendation was published on June 27th 2006 by the W3C and provides a set of guidelines to encourage developers to design and build content that can be deployed seamlessly across a range of different mobile and web access devices. The Guidelines are the product of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) and are a clear indication of broad technical consensus within the industry for the Candidate Recommendation. They are an important milestone towards the W3C’s mission of improving access to the Web from mobile devices. Segala is a founding sponsor of the MWI and an active participant in the development of the guidelines.

Segala is one of the first members to publicly support the W3C’s invitation to the community to provide implementation experience and feedback and will be actively promoting the guidelines to its’ clients and mobile web and accessibility partners. "There are many devices, but one Web," said Daniel Appelquist, chair of the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group. "Practical guidelines on how to create content once that can be delivered to the plethora of devices saves developers and organizations time and money, and has the added benefit of not breaking the Web."

Paul Walsh, CEO of Segala and member of the MWI Steering Council said “As a worldwide provider of Web accessibility certificates and Trustmarks, enabling and bringing trust to the Web through content labelling is our primary goal. Segala is proud to have participated in the creation of the Mobile Web Best Practices within the W3C's MWI, and believes that together with the “future” associated mobileOK Trustmark it will provide a key enabler in allowing mobile users to access the Web with confidence and in a trustworthy manner. Segala will launch a mobileOK certification programme once details of that portion of the MWI programme have been finalised.”

"Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0" was developed by a Working Group that included representatives from 30 organizations including America Online (AOL), Ericsson, France Telecom, Google, Indus Net Technologies, Internet Content Rating Association, Microsoft Corporation, dotMobi, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Openwave Systems Inc., Opera Software, Segala, T-Online International AG, Vodafone and Volantis Systems Ltd.

This work is part of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, which is supported by nineteen MWI Sponsors, including key players in the mobile production chain: Afilias, Argogroup, Bango.net, dotMobi, Drutt Corporation, Ericsson, France Telecom, HP, Jataayu Software, MobileAware, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Opera Software, TIM Italia, RuleSpace, Segala, Vodafone, and Volantis.

About Segala
————————
Segala is a worldwide independent authority and provider of web accessibility and mobile content auditing, testing, certification and trustmark services. Segala provides accessibility conformance evaluations, audits and certification for web and mobile publishers, developers and agencies to satisfy accessibility guidelines and legislation.

Segala is a sponsor member of the W3C Content Label Incubator Group (XG-CL), a worldwide initiative to develop content labelling standards for the web. As an Associate member of the W3C, Segala also participates in the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and is a Founding Sponsor of the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). Segala is the first testing and compliance specialist worldwide to become an associate member of the GSM Association. Segala has global headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. For further information visit www.segala.com.

About the World Wide Web Consortium
———————————————————————-
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web. Over 400 organizations are Members of the Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan, and has additional Offices worldwide. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

# # #

For Further Information, please visit:
Segala - www.segala.com
W3C Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 - www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp

Contact:
Andrew Gerrard
Segala UK
Mobile: +44 (0) 7771 678605
Email: andrew@segala.com
Web : www.segala.com

Segala - Enabling a Reliable, Consistent and Trusted Experience