Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) covers a wide range of recommendations for making websites and products more sustainable. Following these guidelines which utilize planetary, people, and prosperity (PPP) principles throughout the decision-making processes, you can minimize your environmental impact through a mixture of user-centered design, performant web development, renewable infrastructure, sustainable business Strategy, and (with metrics) various combinations of those mentioned. It should be noted that these guidelines will not address every possible mechanism or Strategy to become sustainable, as such, these guidelines (which are notably Web orientated and focused) should be seen as a starting point in a sustainability journey (coverage does not extend for example to manufacturing or shipping of physical products). Following these guidelines will often make Web content more accessible, usable, and performant as a by-product.
To use these guidelines, it is highly recommended that you take a methodical approach. Rather than working through the entire document and broadly attempting to apply everything held within to your project or service, scroll through the table of contents to find a guideline that appeals to either your skill set or that you (based upon the impact / effort rating) feel comfortable in attempting to tackle. Sustainable change is measured in progress over perfection and by breaking down the specification into achievable goals based upon guidelines or even success criteria, you can more easily progress toward long-term targets. Guideline examples and resources may also provide implementation guidance while benefits can help justify their usage to management.
This document has been reviewed by Interest Group members and interested parties. This is a draft document which may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than a work in progress. The Interest Group's role in publishing is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment.
By publishing these guidelines, the Interest Group does not expect that the work produced in this specification will affect the work undertaken by other W3C sustainability, accessibility, or performance groups. The Interest Group will continue to track these Working, Interest, and Community Groups as appropriate. This specification closely aligns itself with the principles laid down for Web Platform Design [[design-principles]], Privacy [[privacy-principles]], the Ethical Web [[ethical-web-principles]], and Human Rights [[HR-Spec]].
To provide feedback regarding this specification, the preferred method is using GitHub. It is free to create a GitHub account to file issues. Comments received on the specification cannot result in changes to this version of the guidelines but may be addressed in errata or future versions of WSG. A list of issues filed as well as archives of previous mailing list public-sustainableweb@w3.org (archive) discussions are publicly available. There is currently no preliminary interoperability or implementation report, however one of the key tasks of this Interest Group is to examine the potential for better models for digital sustainability that can feed into tooling (and thus into large studies of implementations) that can be reported upon and fed back into guidance for the Web Sustainability Guidelines.
In 1999, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [[WCAG22]] defined a set of baseline guidance for Web content developers and creators of authoring tools, with the primary goal of promoting Web accessibility through the adoption of inclusive strategies. Through a similar methodology, the Web Sustainability Guidelines promote planetary, people, and prosperity best practices based on measurable, evidence-based research; aimed at end-users, stakeholders, website or application creators, tool authors, tool authors, educators, students, policymakers, purchasing agents, product owners, managers, and decision-makers, with the primary goal of reducing harm to the wider ecosystem (regarding people and the planet) through sustainable Strategy adoption.
For those unfamiliar with sustainability issues relating to the Web, consider that many variables [[VARIABLES]] may contribute to waste or emissions being produced online.
Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) is developed in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world. It does so intending to provide a shared Strategy for Web sustainability that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally. WSG is designed to apply broadly to different existing Web technologies and to be testable with a combination of automated testing and human evaluation.
Web sustainability depends not only on sustainable websites and products but also on sustainable Web browsers and other user agents, examples include the performance of rendering and the accurate measuring of website energy use through developer tooling. Authoring tools also have an important role in Web sustainability, by ensuring performant code, reducing waste, and the results are served in the most sustainable way possible.
Significant challenges were encountered in finding existing research data to both identify and establish guidance for all the variables that affect Web sustainability, which came as no surprise with the subject being such an emerging and rapidly evolving field. Work will continue in this area in future versions of WSG.
The WSG were originally developed under the guidance of the Sustainable Web Design Community Group. W3C Community Groups act as incubator hubs where ideas for new technologies and standards can be discussed without formal constraints.
Over two years with the help of over 100 subject matter experts from around the globe, the group created the first draft, and subsequently through GitHub and regular meetings continued over another year to progress the WSG and its supplements to a level of maturity in which the group and its work were ready to become a part of the W3C family (where this specification continues being developed to this day).
The individuals and organizations that use WSG vary widely and include Web designers and developers, policymakers, purchasing agents, teachers, and students. To meet the varying needs of this audience, several layers of guidance are provided including general guidelines, testable success criteria, impact and effort ratings, advisory potential benefits, documented examples, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) ratings, evidence-based links, and category tags.
All of these layers of guidance (guidelines, success criteria, impact, effort, benefits, reporting, examples, resources, and tags) work together to provide guidance on how to make content more sustainable. Authors are encouraged to view and apply all layers that they can (relevance, time, or budget permitting), including the additional content, to best make their product or service the most sustainable it can become. It should be considered that while great care has been taken to make these guidelines as well-rounded and feature-complete as possible, there will likely be additional tasks authors can perform to improve sustainability which this specification failed to address due to (for example) new techniques becoming available.
At the top are six principles that provide the foundation for Web Sustainability: clean, efficient, open, honest, regenerative, and resilient.
These guiding principles were chosen to act as the foundation of the WSG on the basis that they opened the conversation as to what Web sustainability could and should mean for website or application creators and product owners attempting to make a change to benefit people and the planet.
While the primary focus of our guidelines is sustainability in the environmental impact sense, to avoid narrowing our definition, as with many frameworks this specification takes an PPP approach to sustainability. The benefit of this methodology is that while we do recognize the importance of energy / carbon accounting and reduction, we avoid carbon tunnel vision and seek to approach digital sustainability reductions through additional measures such as through the reduction of water waste and raw material conservation such as paper. We also are mindful of the social aspects of sustainability and the importance of people as well as the planet, thereby including important criteria, notes, and cross-links where appropriate to W3C work in accessibility, privacy, and other groups and including mentions of Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR), ethical behavior, and other important disciplines.
Of course, principles on their own do not make for good testable guidelines, which is why our guidelines are as heavily evidence-weighted as possible, aligning with existing sustainability reporting frameworks and standards (such as GRI). We also have made every effort possible to map our work to comply with existing and upcoming worldwide regulatory frameworks to assist with compliance.
Under the principles are guidelines. These guidelines provide the basic goals that authors should work toward to make content more sustainable. The guidelines provide the framework and overall objectives to help authors understand the success criteria, which are testable against, to implement better digital solutions. This specification groups guidelines within four categories (User Experience Design, Web Development, Infrastructure, Product and Business) that overarches various specialisms. It should, however, be noted that while many of these guidelines are curated into categories for simplicity, often they are not limited to a single group and can be utilized within other specialisms for a sustainability benefit. They also come equipped with tags that can be utilized by third-party user-agent tools to filter the criteria on journeys, categories, preferences, or additional variables to benefit the author during the implementation process.
For each guideline, testable success criteria are provided. WSG success criteria are written as testable statements that are not technology-specific. Guidance about satisfying the success criteria in specific technologies, as well as general information about interpreting the success criteria is provided in separate documents or within third-party sources as cited evidence. Details regarding machine testability and whether human testing or intervention is required in order to meet a success criteria are indicated against each success criteria. Resources (third-party evidence-based links) are denoted to allow authors to better understand and meet the Success Criteria for compliance purposes. These Resources are also provided within a separate document and all information within is subject to change.
This specification offers interactivity. You can filter and see only the Success Criteria that apply to your interests / choices by viewing the Full Document mode of the WSG and clicking the interactive "Filter the available WSG Success Criteria upon certain settings" link at the top of the content. Your choices will reveal themselves upon selecting from the categories and checkboxes.
These guidelines come with both an impact and effort rating system. Unlike other W3C specifications, WSG uses a simple system of Low, Medium, or High ratings against each individual guideline to reduce the burden for individuals to identify quick wins or minimal implementations, from long-term benefits or heavy refactoring while encouraging a policy of progress over perfection.
Impact:
Effort:
For each of the guidelines and success criteria in the WSG document itself, the Interest Group has also documented a wide variety of potential benefits. The benefits are informative and may potentially justify the scope for compliance with the specification.
Furthermore, for those requiring guidelines to be linked to a standardized methodology that can be used in reporting the digital sustainability conformance levels of a business, a section on GRI compliance is provided.
GRI Impact:
As with impact and effort ratings, a similar scoring methodology has been used within each rating section.
For this specification, an open source Jupyter Notebook was created. As an input, it takes a spreadsheet containing all the guidelines and (using low, medium, or high) their indicators of impact on the reduction of server resource usage, network transfer, and end-user device usage. Then it takes data from a GreenIT Report [[FOOTPRINT]] which estimates the environmental impact of the mentioned categories across material use, water use, energy use, and GHG emissions. It then combines these datasets and estimates the comparative impact of a given recommendation on different sections of GRI taxonomy.
Examples (where possible) are provided, comprised of either URL resources or code samples to showcase how a Success Criteria within a guideline could be addressed. Tags are also provided in order to help individuals identify the relationships that occur between our material and particular groups.
It should be noted that the coverage of the Layers of Guidance, with particular emphasis on the impact and effort ratings, may be left open to interpretation, due to the broad and varying nature of how variables can benefit the wider ecosystem. For example, a guideline may have a low impact on preserving water but a high impact on preserving electricity. As such, the nature of benefits is nuanced and may require more in-depth analysis if authors wish to target specific environmental concerns such as water, paper, or mineral waste.
Currently, the Web Sustainability Guidelines use a crude metric of human assessment from subject-matter experts and a stated calculation and methodology underpinning the GRI reporting. However, future versions of the specification will seek to expand upon this, emphasizing metric-based calculations and proven datasets through measurability to identify emissions (and other) related targets.
It should also be noted that a drawback of the sustainability sector is that unlike other forms of measurement in other fields (such as web performance and accessibility) where binary conversations can occur (something either "is" or "is not" happening), there is unlikely to be a situation where a product or service is never emitting or causing some sort of impact upon the environment by nature of it existing. As such, implementors need to come to terms with the fact that the aim of the Web Sustainability Guidelines should be to firstly reduce what you can, then for what you cannot (as emissions will likely always occur to some extent) compensate for these continuous emissions to ensure as minimal a footprint as possible.
Coverage should not be restricted to what falls within the digital sector. While for this specification we primarily focus on Internet-related technologies (and the people and businesses that use them), sustainability variables exist beyond the scope of this work and as such, the impacts of these differing areas of concern should be addressed when meeting targets, reporting, and complying with relevant legislation.
The body of work and landscape WSG builds on is constantly evolving. Some, typically referred to as "living" or "evergreen" standards, are subject to change frequently, and their impact on this publication's validity may be immediate. Others are updated less regularly and the changes may not affect WSG publications until a new revision is issued.
In all cases, it is therefore prudent that implementors should regularly ensure that best practices have not changed due to new research or data and that any tooling they are using is frequently updated to account for compliance changes occurring as a result of more weighty evidence and guidance.
As well as sections marked as non-normative, all authoring diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative. The main normative content of WSG is composed of guidelines and success criteria, which define requirements that impact conformance claims. Non-normative material provides advisory information to help interpret the guidelines but does not create requirements that impact a conformance claim.
This section lists requirements for conformance to WSG. It also provides information about how to make optional conformance claims.
The WSG approach to conformance differs from WCAG in that in preference to having conformance levels, these guidelines are robustly built so that they can be implemented over time, in a non-specific order, and each will provide some measurable sustainability benefit. As such, conformance is measured upon the implementation of each guideline (and all of its success criteria being met) across the whole website or product.
Total conformance is achieved by meeting every Success Criteria for every guideline within the specification. As a general policy, most websites or products will not likely be able to satisfy all Success Criteria. This could be as a result of time commitments for refactoring code, or because certain guidelines and Success Criteria simply do not apply to your work. In these situations, it is not recommended that authors prioritize conformance over other important website features such as security updates. Pragmatism and progress over perfection should be considered paramount when implementing and conforming to these guidelines.
Conformance claims are not required. Authors can conform to WSG without making a claim. If a conformance claim is made, then the conformance claim must include the following information:
Recording conformance claims may be helpful for utilization within a sustainability statement or a method of proving that you are meeting sustainability reduction targets (such as for internal scope accounting).
In the field of sustainability, the potential for greenwashing (misappropriation or deliberately misinterpreting our work to appear greener than you are) is a very real threat. Within other fields of the tech industry (such as web accessibility), false claims can lead to harm to users. In sustainability, harm can occur not only to users of a product or service but also to the wider ecosystem.
As such, with claims of conformance, we advise consumers and implementors to do the following:
Legislation exists (or is coming into force globally) providing coverage around sustainability claims and as such, penalties for greenwashing will not only be detrimental to your visitors but to your business.
The WSG document is designed to meet the needs of those who need a stable, referenceable technical specification. Other documents, called supporting documents, are based on this document and address other important purposes, including providing further techniques regarding implementation strategies, guiding authors through the guidelines that apply to their use case, and how WSG would be applied to new technologies.
WSG meets a set of requirements for WSG which, in turn, inherit requirements from any prior versions. Requirements structure the overall framework of guidelines and ensure backward compatibility. The Interest Group also used a less formal set of acceptance criteria for success criteria which is based on evidence-supported practices grouped by their impact and implementation upon the Web ecosystem. This allows for further expansion in future versions while maintaining a strict grouping of related (and overlapping) guidelines.
WSG was initiated to improve Web Sustainability guidance. As no prior version exists, the initial draft was created through initial Community Group meetings, proposals (laid out in meeting minutes), and early draft guidelines were drawn up and refined, leading to the guidelines included in this version. This work has been continued through the formation of a W3C Interest Group to enhance and improve upon the work of the early Community Group. The Interest Group considers that WSG incrementally advances Web Sustainability in numerous areas, but underscores that not all potential environmental improvements are met by these guidelines.
If you are creating content and systems designed for users, then whether you know it or not, you are working in user experience (UX).
Good user experience reduces time and resources wasted on the journey. Poor user experience does the opposite, often also harming accessibility. Meanwhile, visual design choices and how we present information can have some of the biggest impacts on asset size, performance, and overall web sustainability.
Goals include:
Benefits include:
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify existing or potential negative external variables affecting a project. Disclose these in a publicly available resource, identifying areas where digital sustainability can be improved. Perform this audit at the start of your project and at regular intervals.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Many variables can impact the user experience, and a bunch of these can impact how sustainable your website will be. Attempting to identify where you can make a difference to the visitor and give them a more sustainable experience will be beneficial.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, Hardware, Ideation, Networking, Performance, Reporting, Research, Social Equity, Software
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify primary and secondary target visitors. Evaluate and define their needs through quantitative and/or qualitative research, testing, or analytics. Ensure your visitors and affected communities are consistently and closely involved in the research and testing process.
Machine-testable and Resources
Account for potential visitor constraints, such as the device age, operating system choice or version, browser, VPN use, and connection speeds when designing and assessing the quality of user experiences.
Machine-testable and Resources
Conduct internal and user research to identify whether a technical, material, or human constraint might require adaptations to reduce barriers or improve access to content.
Human-testable and Resources
Remove identified barriers to access. These can include dark or deceptive design patterns, accessibility issues, or other pain points.
Human-testable and Resources
Assign all involved parties, including visitors, an equitable role in the decision-making process when undertaking research, identifying needs, or iterative design work.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
When creating a product or service, identifying your target audience through user-research, analytics, data collected using ethical anonymous methods, or feedback from and with visitors is important in being able to create a customized service for and with them that is tailor-made for their specific preferences, adapted for any needs they may have, and particularly useful in helping a website or application evolve its service to meet sustainability targets.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, Ideation, Patterns, Reporting, KPIs, Research, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish a plan of action for non-users and other affected parties who might be indirectly impacted by choices made in e-commerce, this can include neighbors accepting parcels or traffic jams due to deliveries. Other examples include the local health impacts of infrastructure emissions, or supply chain pressure. Research non-user needs, understand how they might be affected, and consider ways negative effects could be mitigated.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
If you provide physical goods or services, you may also have to account for the sustainability impact of delivery services. This can often be tricky, but courier companies may provide useful tooling to help you identify emissions data for routing.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
E-Waste, Hardware, Ideation, KPIs, Marketing, Reporting, Research, Social Equity, Usability
Human-testable and Resources
Optimize all branding materials and assets approved during the ideation process in line with sustainability best practices prior to deployment. This also applies to brand refreshes, rebranding, and later enhancements. Make publicly available branding guidelines detailing the sustainability impact and best-practice deployment of materials and assets.
Human-testable and Resources
Use wireframes and rapid prototyping to quickly build consensus, reduce risk, and reduce the number of resources needed to build features. Evaluate the impact of all tools used.
Human-testable and Resources
Use the participatory design approach to involve users within the iteration and design process. When conducting user testing, reach out to your community to help improve your product. Provide opportunities for users to apply their knowledge and experience to your product or service.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
While some things require the use of electricity, during the early ideation phase you could consider wireframing or rapid prototyping (using paper) among other offline tools to reduce energy consumption. Even the electronic versions of these may have a lower carbon cost than committing to building a full-blown experience for each idea.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Ideation, Research, Social Equity, Software, Strategy, UI
Human-testable and Resources
Use a human-centered approach in brainstorming to consider the needs, interests, and impact on directly and indirectly affected parties.
Human-testable and Resources
Consider planetary needs and ecological boundaries during the brainstorming process. This can include creating non-user, non-human (animal, planet) personas, or climate-specific user stories and sprints.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Brainstorming allows you to flush out ideas before you commit to pursuing a path. Being considerate of not just your visitors but other individuals who may be affected by your product or service (including non-humans, like the environment!) is a useful practical exercise as it may influence your decisions in how you scope your project.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Ideation, KPIs, Research, Social Equity, Strategy
Machine-testable and Resources
Make access as simple and efficient as possible. Displaying the time required to complete an action, reduction of choice, and ensuring visitors understand requirements at the start of a journey can improve user efficiency.
Human-testable and Resources
Ensure user journeys are as smooth as possible. It also helps to build on established design patterns that people already understand.
Machine-testable and Resources
Enable visitors to complete tasks without distractions or non-essential features getting in the way.
Machine-testable and Resources
Only show visitors information that is relevant to their experience, hiding non-essential information from view.
Machine-testable and Resources
Ensure that disruptive actionable information, such as pop-up or modal windows, can only be initiated by the visitor.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
When providing the option to download, save, print, or access anything online, defaulting to the most lightweight, least featureful version will reduce emissions through passive browsing; with non-essential information removed from the screen either to be shown when it's required or eliminated.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Patterns, Performance, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Use decorative design only when it enhances user experience. Remove unnecessary assets or those that do not enhance user experience or sustainability. Alternatively, make these optional and disabled by default.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
It's great to have a pretty-looking website or application but to ensure a sustainable design, it's important to avoid cluttering up the interface with too many visuals (which aren't necessary to the content). Keeping a clean design will reduce website rendering, and thereby emissions.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Performance, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide an accessible, easy-to-use navigation menu with search features to help visitors easily find what they need.
Machine-testable and Resources
Consider implementing an efficient and regularly updated sitemap for human visitors. While guidance beyond the nav bar may be unnecessary for smaller projects, clearly structured human-readable sitemaps can improve accessibility and help users find their way through websites or other online content with naturally complex or legacy information architecture.
Machine-testable and Resources
Implement lightweight and efficient means for visitors to learn about new content and services.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Information architecture is a central part of the Web development process, and how you structure a website ensures that people can way-find your content easily. Having appropriately marked-up links within your product or service allows visitors, search engines, and social networks to identify key information quickly.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, HTML, Marketing, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Ensure users can easily control how and when they receive information, with respect for their attention, focus, and mental energy.
Machine-testable and Resources
Prioritize features that assist rather than distract visitors, not unnecessarily prolonging the time they spend engaging with your content.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid using design strategies intended to artificially prolong user attention, such as infinite scroll.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Time is precious, wasting a visitor's will cause frustration and lead to abandonment or resentment. Additionally, the more time a visitor spends in front of a screen, the more energy they utilize. As such, throwing stuff in front of the visitor vying for their attention might sound like good business (even though we know due to banner blindness it rarely works), but it mostly damages the environment and dissuades the visitor.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Patterns, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Display only essential components at the time they are needed. Where appropriate, use familiar patterns to maximize ease of use.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Visitors can identify patterns fairly easily, and they like browsing websites and apps and feeling as if they know what they are dealing with. As such, focusing your efforts on producing a product or service that is clean and has key components in easy-to-recognize locations (and visuals) will allow faster user experiences and fewer emissions.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, CSS, Patterns, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid dark patterns, deceptive design, or unethical coding techniques that manipulate visitors into taking actions that are not in their best interest. Examples include anti-right click, copy prevention, requiring an account to purchase, etc.
Human-testable and Resources
Select, present, and label advertisements and sponsorships transparently and only implement where these provide economic and ethical value without diminishing user experience.
Machine-testable and Resources
Evaluate and remove unnecessary or unused analytics and tracking, including any operating without user consent.
Machine-testable and Resources
Focus on serving user intent through non-manipulative search and social media optimization. For example, do not misuse coding practices intended to support assistive technologies. This can include content with natural redundancy, or unhelpful or low-quality material designed only to manipulate search results.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Manipulating the visitor into doing things you want them to is a short-term gain, long-term loss tactic tool. It's ethically bad, unsustainable, and should be avoided at all costs.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Assets, Compatibility, JavaScript, JavaScript, Patterns, Privacy, Security, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Create deliverables, including documentation, in ways that facilitate later reuse.
Machine-testable and Resources
Document functionality and technical specifications so that they can be understood by everyone that needs to use them.
Machine-testable and Resources
Developers have access to code comments and have the ability to view source to make it easier to access, understand, maintain, and use code.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Everything produced by designers, developers, writers, and those involved with a project should be in an open format, well maintained, and curated in a common format (so everyone is working from the same model).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Content, Education, Patterns, Software
Machine-testable and Resources
Use a design system based on web standards and established patterns to share interface components and ensure a consistent user experience.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Design systems allow common components and patterns to be formalized and managed within a website or application. By using such a tool, designers and developers can avoid reinventing existing tooling and thereby reduce wasted time (and emissions).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Education, Patterns, Strategy, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Write content using plain and inclusive language, at an appropriate reading level for your audience. Account for specific needs in relation to accessibility, native language, and internationalization.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use appropriate formatting for digital media. Provide a clear document structure with consideration of visual hierarchy. Use headings, bulleted lists, line spacing, and highlights appropriately. Provide information with appropriate formatting for the action users need to take.
Machine-testable and Resources
Prioritize SEO from the early design stages and throughout the lifecycle to ensure content can be found and used.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Everyone should be able to understand what you've written without wasting time staring at a screen or jumping from page to page looking for answers, whether they have accessibility requirements or not. This also means avoiding using technical language (without explanations) and including enough information to help direct people (and search engines) from page to page.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Content, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Determine the need for images with consideration of the quantity, format, and sizes required.
Machine-testable and Resources
Resize, optimize, and compress each image. Provide images in appropriate sizes for different screen resolutions.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include lazy loading to ensure images only load when they are required.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide the option for images to be disabled or provide a low-fidelity alternative.
Machine-testable and Resources
Set up a media management and use policy to reduce the overall impact of images. Include criteria for media compression and file formats.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Of all the data that comprises the largest over-the-wire transfer rates within the average website or application, images are usually those that are responsible due to their quantity and usefulness. As such, doing all you can to reduce their size and unnecessary loading will be beneficial for sustainability.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<img src="image.webp" alt="..." loading="lazy"/> <iframe src="video.html" title="..." loading="lazy"></iframe>
Tags
Assets, Content, HTML, Performance, Software, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Do not include any video or audio unless it provides positive value. Disable auto-play functionality on audio and video.
Machine-testable and Resources
Optimize and compress media appropriately. Provide media in compatible and appropriate formats. Avoid non-native embedded media players.
Machine-testable and Resources
Load data-intensive media on the client side, including the media itself, behind a facade - a non-functional and static representational element.
Machine-testable and Resources
Let the visitor control media, including a choice of resolutions and formats and the option to deactivate media. Inform users the length, format, and data intensity of the media.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish media management and use policy to evaluate and reduce the overall impact of media, such as audio, video, or emerging media formats. Include criteria for media compression and file formats.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Video and audio-heavy websites are often those that can have significant sustainability costs in terms of storage and carbon intensity for viewers who have to process the media with their devices to watch them (draining batteries). Optimizing such assets as much as possible is critical for a sustainable product or service.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Content, HTML, Performance, Software, UI, Usability
Human-testable and Resources
Use animation only when it adds value and not for decorative elements.
Machine-testable and Resources
Progressively display an appropriate number of animations to avoid overburdening the visitor or negatively impacting device performance. This includes setting a maximum number of replays or iterations.
Machine-testable and Resources
Allow visitors to start, stop, pause, or otherwise control animated content.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Animation can be both CPU and GPU-intensive and have implications for accessibility. While visually appealing and useful in certain situations, care and attention should be taken when considering the use of a high emissions technology.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
body *,
body *::before,
body *::after {
animation-delay: -1ms !important;
animation-duration: 1ms !important;
animation-iteration-count: 1 !important;
background-attachment: initial !important;
transition-duration: 1ms !important;
transition-delay: -1ms !important;
scroll-behavior: auto !important;
}
}
Tags
Accessibility, CSS, JavaScript, Performance, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Use pre-installed, web-safe typefaces wherever possible.
Machine-testable and Resources
Limit the number of fonts used. Design or subset fonts to omit unnecessary or unused variations, such as font weight or characters. Use the most performant file format available.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Since the advent of the modern web, the ability to include embedded fonts and provide a more customized experience has seen their use explode. They aren't always the most performant option (which poses emissions hazards) and come with a few issues such as Flash Of Unstyled Content (FOUC) / Flash Of Unstyled Text (FOUT) which should be addressed.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, avenir next, avenir, segoe ui, helvetica neue, helvetica, Cantarell, Ubuntu, roboto, noto, arial, sans-serif;
Tags
CSS, Performance, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide open alternatives, such as HTML, to proprietary file formats, such as PDF.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide a suitable font stack as a fallback when custom typefaces are used.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide meaningful alternative text for all descriptive images that are non-decorative and support the user's understanding of the content.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include transcripts and/or text versions of media files as an alternative to playing the media.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include WebVTT closed captions and subtitles support for videos. Provide localization as expected by your audience, including subtitles and sign language that meet the same standard.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Media, images, fonts, and documents enrich the Internet. The problem is that people may not want to watch a video, listen to an audio file, look at an image, or use a specific application. By providing alternative formats to anything you embed, you ensure the widest possible audience can benefit from it (and reduced carbon output will occur as the alternative text will induce less consumer hardware thrashing than its rich media alternative).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
WEBVTT 00:01.000 --> 00:04.000 - Something happened yesterday morning. 00:05.000 --> 00:09.000 - Or was it in the evening? - I can't remember!
Tags
Accessibility, Assets, Compatibility, Content, HTML, Performance, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Remove unnecessary forms and reduce form content to the minimum necessary to meet the user needs while satisfying the organization's minimum requirements. Clearly communicate why a form is necessary, the value it provides, the number of steps required for completion, and what will be done with the collected data. Also disclose if the data will be shared with third parties.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid using auto-completion or auto-suggest based on partial entry to conserve user bandwidth and reduce unnecessary server side requests. Support the use of helpful tooling, such as password managers, by not preventing autofill.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Understandably, businesses want to know more about their customers, but a key part of sustainability is being ethical towards visitors and as such, the right to privacy is considered paramount. Don't demand information when it's not required and not only will this help visitors complete transactions quicker (reducing emissions), it will help with legal compliance such as GDPR.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, HTML, Privacy, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Support non-visual browsing methods and various non-graphical ways to interact with content. This includes anything from assistive technologies to voice agents. Consider and provide working alternatives to visual interfaces.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Certain visitors such as those with visual disabilities or speech agents (like Amazon Alexa) may rely on an experience without the graphical part of an interface. As such, they potentially may use less data or may have a different carbon impact on the Web.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
code {
background-color: #292a2b;
color: #e6e6e6;
font-family: monospace;
speak: literal-punctuation; /* Reads all punctuation out loud in iOS VoiceOver */
}
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, Content, HTML, Performance, Social Equity, Software, UI, Usability
Human-testable and Resources
Remove non-essential notifications. Justify and reduce email, text message (SMS), and other invasive or energy-intense notifications to what is strictly necessary. Useful notifications, such as alerts for new content should be used with care and restraint.
Human-testable and Resources
Let the user adjust their own notification and messaging settings. Ensure the options to unsubscribe, log out, and close an account should be available and visible. Ensure it is possible for the user to change their contact details.
Machine-testable and Resources
Clearly explain the result of a potential input through helpful prompts and messages that explain errors, next steps, and other relevant information. This will help to manage users’ expectations.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Notifications whether through the browser or messaging can be potentially useful, but only used in moderation. Spam and the lack of control are contributing sources of Internet emissions and as such, businesses should aim to reduce such actions.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<form> <label for="choose">Would you prefer a banana or cherry? (required)</label> <input id="choose" name="i-like" required /> <button>Submit</button> </form>
Tags
JavaScript, Privacy, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Design your process to reduce the need for paper documents. Where the production of paper documents is essential, it should be designed to have the lowest impact possible. Include a CSS print stylesheet and test it with different types of content. Encourage saving documents in digital formats over paper-based storage and archiving.
Machine-testable and Resources
Optimize and compress all downloadable documents. Make them available in a variety of accessible file formats.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid duplicating effort. If a document will be reused, generate and save it once on the server side for reuse, ideally on a cookie-free domain.
Machine-testable and Resources
Display the document name, a summary, the file size, and the format prior to downloading. Allow users to choose the right format and language for their needs where possible. Avoid embedding documents directly; provide a link to download or view them within the browser instead.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Printing or downloading documents can both be a net benefit and a net cost in terms of sustainability as it can reduce repeat requests to websites, but the act of printing (especially when unoptimized) wastes valuable ink and paper.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Compatibility, Content, E-Waste, Hardware, Performance, Software, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Outline processes used to prototype and test new features, product ideas, and user interface components. Test with real users who represent different perspectives and user constraints.
Human-testable and Resources
Ensure prototyping and testing processes are sufficiently resourced to support long-term viability and avoid project abandonment.
Human-testable and Resources
Produce or provide, training materials to properly educate and onboard new contributors.
Human-testable and Resources
Conduct regular and extensive testing alongside user interviews to validate whether released features meet internal goals and audience needs.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization has policies and practices in place to incorporate stakeholder-focused testing and prototyping into its product development cycles.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Education, Governance, Ideation, Research, Social Equity, Strategy, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Check the codebase for bugs, identify performance issues, and account for accessibility or security problems at appropriate regular intervals, such as every month or quarter.
Machine-testable and Resources
Implement non-regression tests for all critical features.
Machine-testable and Resources
Incorporate regression testing into each release cycle to ensure new features do not introduce bugs or otherwise conflict with existing functionality.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Products and services at any stage of a project can suffer bugs or issues that need to be resolved. Fixing these regressions also generates additional development and environmental costs. By resolving such issues, you can reduce the chances of a visitor giving up on a session and thereby reduce the amount of wasted energy your website emits overall.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, KPIs, Performance, Privacy, Reporting, Research, Security, Social Equity, Strategy, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify and resolve bottlenecks or issues in the underlying code or infrastructure which could impact sustainability and performance. Consider both simulated and real-world metrics. Monitor performance across every release cycle using appropriate tooling or through research and auditing.
Machine-testable and Resources
Collect only data required to provide a streamlined and effective user journey and comply with relevant accessibility and data protection legislation. Put policies in place to ensure strict adherence.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Try to ethically measure how efficient a visitor's experience is by analyzing the performance of the website or application and how it has been constructed, by doing so you might be able to reduce any issues they may have encountered previously, decrease loading times, and reduce the burden of loading unnecessary pages.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<link rel="prefetch" href="/articles/" as="document">
Tags
Accessibility, KPIs, Networking, Performance, Privacy, Research, Strategy, Usability
Human-testable and Resources
Monitor visitor feedback, adoption, and churn rates in relation to different features and incorporate these insights into future releases.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Occasionally, you may find that features you have developed for a product or service have little to no active users or could be better implemented to bring better value. Undertaking research to identify redundancy allows you to optimize your codebase (and reduce emissions).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
KPIs, Research, Strategy, Usability
Human-testable and Resources
Incorporate usability testing into product cycles and routinely measure the impact of these tests for future releases.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Researching a product or service and how it is used over time allows you to iterate and ensure the features and functionality being offered match how user-needs change over time. Doing so will help you reduce code redundancy further and reduce emissions through optimization.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, KPIs, Research, Social Equity, Strategy, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish and maintain a compatibility policy which covers current and obsolete devices and software versions, listing the supported device brands, operating systems, and browsers (including versions). Update this regularly in line with new releases.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid planned obsolescence. Strive to maintain compatibility for as long as possible and communicate clearly whether an update is evolutionary, as in large updates that can significantly reduce performance, or corrective, as in smaller updates that fix bugs or improve security.
Machine-testable and Resources
Test performance in various scenarios to ensure compatibility. Testing should cover weak, unstable, restricted, or slow connections, old browsers, and devices older than five years.
Human-testable and Resources
Use device-adaptable methods such as responsive design and prototype interfaces to support progressive enhancement and content prioritization.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use a PWA over a native mobile application if it meets sustainability, interoperability, and compatibility criteria.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Compatibility is a critical part of the sustainability mindset and should be prioritized through all products and services. If individuals wish to use older devices (or cannot upgrade due to cost) or do not wish to upgrade as frequently, it will reduce the amount of e-waste that enters the system. If something doesn't work, it's also likely to result in visitors suffering a wasted effort, potentially leading to refused access to your service (and thereby emitting further emissions).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, KPIs, Research, Security, Social Equity, Software, Strategy, UI, Usability
Sustainable web design and development practices at the front-end and back-end often intersect with best practices, unlocking numerous benefits for people and the planet alike.
Front-end and back-end web development play a big role in creating a sustainable web. The result is code that runs more efficiently and transparently. Products are better able to meet visitor and user objectives, fast, while reducing the burden on hardware resources. Sustainable web development offers scaling and wide-reaching advantages.
Goals include:
Benefits include:
Machine-testable and Resources
Set clear goals with performance and environmental impact in mind, then meet them. These could include, the number of requests or elements that must be rendered.
Machine-testable and Resources
Consider differences in the energy intensity or testable impact across each component. For example, unstyled text is less computationally intensive to render than CSS, which in turn is less process-heavy than JavaScript, which is less resource-heavy than WebGL or 4K video.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Performance is a key part of the sustainability mindset as reductions in loading times can have a considerable impact on energy loads within CPU, GPU, RAM, and hard drive caching (among other variables), as such ensuring a performant product is essential.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
KPIs, Networking, Performance, Research, Social Equity, Strategy
Machine-testable and Resources
Remove unnecessary whitespace, comments, and other non-essential characters from code and data files to reduce file sizes and improve loading times. This applies to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, SVG, and other relevant file types.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Minifying code is essential for creating efficient, performant, and sustainable web applications. Smaller codebases translate to faster load times, reduced bandwidth consumption, and easier maintenance. This principle applies to both front-end (client-side) and back-end (server-side) code, though the specific techniques may differ. Code should not be minified in not-for-production developer visible situations.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
!function(e,t){"use strict";"object"==typeof module&&"object"==typeof module.exports?module.exports=e.document?t(e,!0):function(e){if(!e.document)throw new Error("jQuery requires a window with a document");return t(e)}:t(e)}("undefined"!=typeof window?window:this,function(g,e){"use strict";var t=[],r=Object.getPrototypeOf,s=t.slice,v=t.flat?function(e){return t.flat.call(e)}:function(e){return t.concat.apply([],e)},u=t.push,i=t.indexOf
Tags
CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Performance
Machine-testable and Resources
Break down bandwidth-heavy components into smaller, modular segments that can be loaded only when required. This applies to both front-end and back-end code.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
This approach is applicable across various programming languages and platforms, both client-side and server-side. By modularizing code and assets, you can ensure faster load times, better resource management, reduce redundancy, and improved scalability for your application. Additionally, reducing unnecessary data transfer and optimizing load times can contribute to more energy-efficient operations, helping to lower the environmental impact, improve the UX of your web application or service.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
link.addEventListener("click", (e) => {
e.preventDefault();
import("/modules/my-module.js")
.then((module) => {
/* Do something */
})
.catch((err) => {
console.error(err.message);
});
});
Tags
CSS, JavaScript, Performance
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify and eliminate unused and dead code, commonly within CSS and JavaScript.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Often when coding, projects can accumulate clutter and functions that are no longer used (due to newer, more effective features being developed). By utilizing tree shaking techniques, all the "dead wood" will be automatically dropped upon compilation, reducing a file's size.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
export function read(props) { return props.book }
import { read } from 'utilities';
eventHandler = (e) => { read({ book: e.target.value })}
Tags
CSS, JavaScript, Performance
Human-testable and Resources
Remove duplication and/or simplify and optimize your code for better performance, focusing on essential features so you have a cleaner, less redundant product and codebase.
Human-testable and Resources
Improve existing solutions rather than redeveloping and redesigning products from scratch, since the latter would duplicate the coding effort and maintenance burden for developers rather than reduce the learning burden for visitors.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use organization methodology and systems such as DRY or WET to optimize the arrangement and output of your JavaScript and CSS.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Redundancy is the enemy of sustainability. Having systems in place to ensure that everyone can work from established patterns, the website or application remains clean and easy to use, and iteration over redesign is firmly in the mindset that will help promote sustainable practices. It's also worth being wary of abstracting code too early (see AHA methodology) or incorrectly, as while good abstractions can be more efficient, poor ones can waste effort and introduce complexity, bloat, and bugs to your codebase which can lead to emissions.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
.opinions_box {
margin: 0 0 8px 0;
text-align: center;
&__view-more {
text-decoration: underline;
}
&__text-input {
border: 1px solid #ccc;
}
&--is-inactive {
color: gray;
}
}
Tags
CSS, JavaScript, Patterns, Performance
Machine-testable and Resources
Assess third-party content and/or services (including plugins, widgets, feeds, maps, carousels, tracking scripts, and more) as early as possible in the ideation or creation process. Use as few as possible, preferring lighter, less complex solutions to reduce the overall environmental impact, including Scope 3 emissions.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use click-to-load triggers based on an import on interaction pattern to prevent automatic loading of third-party content and/or services (see above). Offer suitable alternatives to third-party use, for example, a link to a contact form as an alternative to a chat widget.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid using large libraries and frameworks. Integrate these only when unable to use a more performant alternative to achieve the same goal.
Machine-testable and Resources
Prioritize self-hosted content over embedding content from third-party services.
Machine-testable and Resources
Host icons and widgets on your own server, rather than relying on third-party services to host and deliver these or embed third-party functionality within your project.
Machine-testable and Resources
Respect user preferences around the use of third-party products and services, similar to the implementation of cookie consent modals. Provide mechanisms to disable or refuse non-first-party features alongside explanations of their purpose unless it is possible to show these third-party features are critical for functionality.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Whether advertising, chatbots, maps, or other tooling; outsourcing your service to a third-party provider may be potentially useful in certain scenarios in reducing design or development time and redundancy (which can be a win for sustainability). Third-party services, however, come with issues, such as the lack of control over emissions, and they often can potentially suffer from latency and large file sizes which may not exist if you self-hosted or created the material.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<iframe src="https://example.com" loading="lazy" width="600" height="400"></iframe>
Tags
JavaScript, Performance, Privacy, Security, Software, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Use accurate markup according to the relevant standard(s).
Machine-testable and Resources
Remove optional HTML elements, attribute quotes, and default attributes only when they do not negatively impact functionality, accessibility, or readability. Retain them when they enhance accessibility, maintain clarity without compromising on performance, or ensure consistent browser rendering.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid using non-standard HTML elements or attributes.
Human-testable and Resources
Prioritize the use of standard HTML elements and attributes. Only use custom elements or Web Components if you cannot use native elements or if you require them for the purposes of producing reusable design system components.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
HTML semantics are important. They don't just play a key role in making the Web look the way it does, they have a function in accessibility, SEO, and even in sustainability. Ensuring that you markup your content correctly and avoid cluttering your markup wastefully will reduce emissions.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<header></header> <section> <article> <figure> <img> <figcaption></figcaption> </figure> </article> </section> <footer></footer>
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, Content, HTML, Social Equity, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Defer loading of non-essential external assets or set these to load asynchronously to avoid a Flash Of Unstyled Content (FOUC).
Machine-testable and Resources
Where external resources are required to be used upon the documents load, optimize loading using resource and priority hints.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The ability to work around render-blocking issues is a great addition to the web. From deferring code, to lazy loading, to asynchronous loading, each has its use case and each can have the potential to reduce or give performance benefits to a website or application.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<img src="image.png" loading="lazy" alt="…" width="200" height="200">
Tags
Assets, CSS, JavaScript, Performance
Machine-testable and Resources
Optimize and only include suitable metadata and microdata.
Machine-testable and Resources
Permit appropriate access to search engines while blocking unsustainable robots and scripts.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide accessibility and usability aids, such as skip links and signposts, to help users find and navigate content.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Helping visitors avoid wasting their time can reduce the number of emissions from time spent in front of a screen. As such, by using existing technologies like metadata, robots.txt files, and accessibility-friendly aids within the page, improvements to the experience can be made.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> <url> <loc>https://www.example.com/foo.html</loc> <lastmod>2022-06-04</lastmod> </url> </urlset>
Tags
Accessibility, HTML, Marketing, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify errors through live validation and with feedback on submission.
Machine-testable and Resources
Clearly label and identify required elements to ensure easy recognition for visitors using assistive technologies. Remove any unnecessary optional elements.
Machine-testable and Resources
Always allow the copying and pasting of content (including passwords) from external sources.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Entering information on a page can lead to problems. If a visitor makes a mistake along the way, it makes good sense to have systems in place to guide them through resolving the typos, confusion, and glitches that can occur which lead to abandonment and extra emissions through wasted device usage.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<label for="username">Username: (3-16 characters)</label>
<input name="username" type="text" value="Sasha" pattern="\w{3,16}" required>
<label for="pin">PIN: (4 digits)</label>
<input name="pin" type="password" pattern="\d{4,4}" required>
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, HTML, Security, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Include the required title element, plus any beneficial optional HTML head elements.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include necessary meta tag references that are commonly recognized and used by user agents such as search engines. Follow recognized standards and vocabularies such as Friend of a Friend (FOAF) or RDFa.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use microdata, structured data (e.g., Schema.org), or microformats in content where a widely used structured data format exists.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Search engines and social networks make use of the content within a website, by ensuring that your metadata is correctly marked up, you can reduce emissions by improving way-finding.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<html>
<head>
<title>Example: A website about Examples</title>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context" : "https://schema.org",
"@type" : "WebSite",
"name" : "Example",
"url" : "https://example.com/"
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Tags
Accessibility, HTML, Marketing, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Accommodate common user preferences, such as prefers-color-scheme, with corresponding CSS media queries. Consider accounting for additional user preferences, including monochrome, prefers-contrast, prefers-reduced-data, prefers-reduced-transparency, and prefers-reduced-motion preference queries where these will benefit your users. Use print and scripting media queries when they can improve sustainability.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Sustainability benefits can be generated in numerous ways, by making sure that your website adheres to the requests made by a browser for specific conditions to be taken into account (such as CSS media and preference queries), you can unlock benefits for the visitor, and as a by-product reduce your emissions. It's worth noting that the introduction of user preferences and APIs has increased the risk of visitor fingerprinting and privacy issues.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
/* wants dark mode */
}
@media (prefers-color-scheme: light) {
/* wants light mode */
}
Tags
Accessibility, Assets, CSS, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Allow your project to work and adapt seamlessly across a variety of devices and screen sizes, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers, smart TVs, and other emerging platforms. This ensures that content and functionality can be easily accessed and are suitably optimized for display on both smaller mobile devices and larger displays without limiting accessibility, usability, or design features on any specific device type. Implement robust fallback strategies to ensure that the digital product or service will not fail if it encounters unsupported technologies.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use progressive enhancement to enhance overall sustainability. This can involve a single approach or a careful combination, such as adaptive design, mobile-first design, or dynamic serving.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use carbon-aware design techniques to maximize your use of renewable energy. This is achieved by adapting the delivery of your project to current electricity availability and visitor grid load. This should include using situational design to reduce the codebase and disable non-essential functionality during high-intensity periods. Similarly, it should be possible to adapt the user interface to perform better with reduced hardware resources, where this measure can be taken to avoid scaling hardware resources and the resultant increase in emissions. It can also include designing algorithms that can automatically disable features based on set thresholds.
Machine-testable and Resources
Support additional indirect methods of interaction, such as voice (speech), code (QR, etc.), reader view (browser, application, or RSS), or connected technologies (watch, appliance, transport, etc.).
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Visitors approach our products and services on a wide variety of devices these days. Ensuring that your device works on the widest range of devices and differing screen resolutions ensures that you will have a compatible website or application. A Device-Adaptable approach goal is to provide a consistent, adaptable experience across a full range of devices by considering all screen sizes and resolutions from the start, rather than primarily focusing on mobile scaling upward.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
@media screen and (min-width: 600px) {
body {
color: red;
}
}
Tags
Compatibility, CSS, Performance, UI, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Improve sustainability through accessible and performant code.
Machine-testable and Resources
Integrate energy-relevant APIs - such as Battery Status, Compression Streams, Page Visibility, or Vibration - where these can reduce energy consumption.
Human-testable and Resources
Call client- or server-side APIs only when necessary. Equally, ensure an API is optimized to only send data that is actually required.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
When new best practices or if beneficial scripting guidance exists that will improve the visitor experience, following it should be of the highest priority (only using scripts ethically should be promoted).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
const audio = document.querySelector("audio");
// Handle page visibility change:
// - If the page is hidden, pause the video
// - If the page is shown, play the video
document.addEventListener("visibilitychange", () => {
if (document.hidden) {
audio.pause();
} else {
audio.play();
}
});
Tags
Accessibility, JavaScript, Security
Machine-testable and Resources
Check scripts and associated code for vulnerabilities, exploits, header issues, and code injection.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The dangers of scripting are well known, and vulnerabilities are discovered with increasing regularity. As such, it's of ethical benefit for authors to ensure all code used regularly passes security processes.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
JavaScript, Privacy, Security, Social Equity
Machine-testable and Resources
Prevent developers from downloading and installing libraries and frameworks to run client-side when they are not needed by checking for unused dependencies. Follow up by uninstalling those that aren't needed.
Machine-testable and Resources
Limit your use of libraries and frameworks to the genuinely necessary as this will reduce the amount of code that has to be downloaded and parsed by the browser. Consider whether you can use vanilla code instead. Check the package size and whether individual modules can be installed and imported individually, as opposed to the entire library.
Machine-testable and Resources
Regularly check dependencies and keep them up to date.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
While JavaScript may not cause the most website bloat, it can cause very high emissions in terms of CPU load due to the rendering process, thereby it makes sense to consider the use of dependencies and third-party code carefully.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
npm uninstall
Tags
JavaScript, Patterns, Performance, Security, Software
Machine-testable and Resources
Include favicon.ico, robots.txt, opensearch.xml, site.webmanifest, and sitemap.xml files by default. Also ensure that any similar files defined in future web standards or specifications are included.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include beneficial files such as ads.txt, carbon.txt, humans.txt, security.txt. Also ensure that any similar files defined in future web standards or specifications are included.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Websites should include a range of expected and standard beneficial files to improve search engine optimization, user experience, transparency, and overall site health. Search engines and browsers regularly request these files by default. If they don't exist, this leads to unnecessary requests, potential errors, and increased emissions. Including these files avoids these issues while also providing SEO, user experience, and other benefits. They each have a low carbon footprint, so while they do create emissions, it's worth including them for the benefits they provide.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Tags
Assets, Compatibility, Marketing, Patterns, Security, UI
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid using deprecated, proprietary, or outdated formats and web standards. Always adopt up-to-date, widely recognized standards. Only use deprecated, proprietary, or outdated code where this is required to meet a documented customer need and if there is a justifiable benefit that cannot otherwise be met. Justifiable reasons could include compatibility with essential legacy systems and/or hardware, accessibility, or emissions reduction. Use polyfills only when necessary, and regularly audit code to see if they can be removed.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The web is full of outdated or deprecated formats and web standards, and proprietary (non-standard custom) features that have been superseded. By adhering to up-to-date and widely recognized formats and web standards, developers can ensure better compatibility, user experience, and lower environmental impact.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Performance
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify the requirements and use this as a basis to help you select the most appropriate implementation for your project. A simpler technological implementation may use more human resources but could have a smaller footprint. A prebuilt solution may use more system resources and have a bigger emissions impact on render, but it could have a faster build time - meaning less carbon is emitted in development.
Human-testable and Resources
Use the most effective approach for your use case. Most of the time, coding from scratch will often provide the most performant results. Where an existing solution is present and is being actively maintained, this may be better optimized than what you can reasonably produce yourself. Favor native components and file systems over WYSIWYG editors - including visual page builders - or other heavy frameworks. Be mindful of the impact of third-party solutions.
Human-testable and Resources
Deliver static in place of dynamic content wherever possible. If you choose to use a code generation tool, then favor the most efficient tool available, such as Static Site Generators (SSGs). Content delivered by a dynamic CMS will involve much more server-side processing and uses bulkier libraries.
Machine-testable and Resources
Carefully select and review plugins, extensions, and themes to maximize interoperability, accessibility, and performance. Audit these regularly over time to ensure continued compatibility.
Human-testable and Resources
Pay particular attention to user interface components with respect to their sustainability impact.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Every product or service is different, and each will require a different set of tooling to accomplish the most sustainable result. Deciding whether to go with a bulky framework, Static Site Generator (SSG), or a Content Management System (CMS) takes careful planning based on client or service requirements.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Compatibility, Ideation, Performance, Software, Strategy
Machine-testable and Resources
Use the latest build of your chosen syntax language and its coupled framework.
Human-testable and Resources
Use the most appropriate programming language for the task. Many tools and programming languages are optimized for the performance of particular tasks. Applying the most appropriate tools to the problem can justify any time or effort involved in their adoption, especially if there is a reasonable user base, provided it does not impact the wellbeing of those involved or risk becoming cost-prohibitive.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Languages evolve regularly, and it's important for security and performance reasons to keep on top of the technology stack you are using. It's also important to consider whether the language you are using is appropriate or optimized for the task you wish to use it for.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Compatibility, Performance, Security
Machine-testable and Resources
Use native functions, APIs, and features over writing your own.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Ensuring that your code is free of redundancy by using pre-existing functionality provided by the web browser is important as it will help you to reduce the amount of time wasted, re-creating the same components, this offers obvious sustainability benefits in terms of time in front of the screen.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<button onclick="window.dialog.showModal();">open dialog</button> <dialog id="dialog"> <p>I'm a dialog.</p> <form method="dialog"> <button>Close</button> </form> </dialog>
Tags
Compatibility, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Patterns, UI
Human-testable and Resources
Optimize database queries, especially for frequently accessed information. If you need information that is stored in a database, and you require it or it is likely to be requested more than once in your code, the database should only be accessed once and the data stored locally for subsequent processing. Avoid relying on framework helpers that might defer filtering to later in the process.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Making multiple requests whether HTTP or within a database has a carbon cost as infrastructure has to send that information back and forth. As such, managing how you store and use data locally for a visitor will help reduce wasted cycles.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
$value = get_post_meta( int $post_id, string $key = '', bool $single = false ): mixed
Tags
Networking, Performance
Even data has a home. Whether you are developing tools, processing data, maintaining online systems, operating websites or something else - conscious choices in this area can have an enormous impact.
Sustainable or green web hosting, infrastructure, and systems covers the energy our data centers use, but it ultimately goes much further: It is also about where and what data is processed or stored and the technologies used. Conscious provisioning choices and best practices can improve both sustainability and operational efficiency.
Goals include:
Benefits include:
Machine-testable and Resources
Monitor key indicators to assess and transparently report the environmental impact of hosting and identify overconsumption. These include energy and water usage, but also hardware factors, such as CPU usage and memory usage. Similarly, track the allocation of servers and CPU cores to optimize resource efficiency. Consumers should monitor and providers should both calculate and transparently share, environmental impact metrics. Metrics should include Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE).
Human-testable and Resources
Maintain hardware to extend its lifespan as long as possible. Use it efficiently at an appropriate capacity, and ensuring it has the necessary certifications. New purchases should be from reliable long-lifespan suppliers.
Human-testable and Resources
Responsibly recycle or upcycle unwanted waste. Materials should be recovered and reused, where possible, or otherwise disposed of appropriately.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use electricity with the lowest possible carbon intensity. Examine location-based emissions factors to calculate the carbon intensity of available electricity from the regional grid. Include the impact of on-site electricity generation, including backup generators, in calculations.
Human-testable and Resources
Balance unavoidable remaining carbon emissions with high-quality market based instruments or other evolving instruments from the voluntary carbon market, until additional renewable energy resources become available. The quality of market-based instruments should be verified by non-profit third-party organizations with sufficient supporting evidence.
Machine-testable and Resources
The impact of domain names is disclosed by registries and registrars, and registrants consider and (where possible) mitigate against these environmental issues.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
In addition to reducing the environmental impacts of a website, choose a hosting service that mitigates the remaining impacts. There are both hardware and software variables to consider, including virtual and real world impacts that need to be measured (and can result in beneficial outcomes if reduced).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
E-Waste, Hardware, Networking, Social Equity
Machine-testable and Resources
Use server-side caching where possible to reduce processing time and repeated database lookups or API calls. Configure caching via server settings to control file-type expiration using appropriate headers, such as Expires or Cache-Control. Cache dynamic page responses where possible to serve static versions to future users. Support client-side caching of frequently used static assets to minimize repeat server requests.
Machine-testable and Resources
Ensure resources remain available and accessible even if the user is disconnected, using methods such as JavaScript Service Workers, Web Workers, and browser local storage features. Client-side JavaScript uses a combination of ServiceWorkers, WebWorkers, storage Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), or cookies (if necessary) to streamline the user-journey. For example, through the use of a PWA (Progressive Web Application) to ensure that an offline version is available and accessible at all times to reduce inequality and improve accessibility.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Browser caching reduces the requirement for files to need to be constantly reloaded from the server, and in certain situations, it can even allow for files to be viewed offline (or in the case of a reverse proxy, send immediate recurring requests without additional calculation or computation from the server). As such, this will have sustainability and performance benefits (for instance by greatly reducing Time-To-First-Byte).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive on # Default: Fallback ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year" # Specific: Assets ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 week" ExpiresByType application/rss+xml "access plus 1 hour" ExpiresByType application/json "access" </IfModule>
Tags
Assets, HTML, JavaScript, Networking, Performance, Software
Machine-testable and Resources
Use server-side compression to reduce file sizes before delivery. Server-side compression settings and tools can be used to compress most commonly used file types, reducing energy consumption while minimizing load times, saving bandwidth, and improving overall performance.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use media compression tools to reduce the file size of images, videos, audio, and any other media before uploading to a server.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Every file will take up a certain amount of room on a server's hard drive, and this data will need to be sent across the wire to each visitor. Doing so will consume resources, but by using compression algorithms you can shrink each file to make its journey less impactful.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase ^(Accept-EncodXng|X-cept-Encoding|X{15}|~{15}|-{15})$ ^((gzip|deflate)\s*,?\s*)+|[X~-]{4,13}$ HAVE_Accept-Encoding
RequestHeader append Accept-Encoding "gzip,deflate" env=HAVE_Accept-Encoding
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_filter.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE "application/atom+xml application/javascript application/json application/ld+json application/manifest+json application/rdf+xml application/rss+xml application/schema+json application/geo+json application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/wasm application/x-font-ttf application/x-javascript application/x-web-app-manifest+json application/xhtml+xml application/xml font/eot font/opentype font/otf font/ttf image/bmp image/svg+xml image/vnd.microsoft.icon image/x-icon text/cache-manifest text/calendar text/css text/html text/javascript text/plain text/markdown text/vcard text/vnd.rim.location.xloc text/vtt text/x-component text/x-cross-domain-policy text/xml"
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_mime.c>
AddEncoding gzip svgz
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
Tags
Assets, Networking, Performance
Machine-testable and Resources
Set up proper error handling and error pages to clearly inform users when something goes wrong, guide them back to useful content, and maintain a consistent, trustworthy experience.
Machine-testable and Resources
Regularly audit to check for broken and outdated links. Update these as necessary and add redirects to guide users and search engines to the correct content to ensure efficient browsing and protect SEO value. Test all redirects to ensure they function as intended and avoid impactful redirect loops. Favor the most efficient redirection system for your setup (e.g., server rules over database lookups).
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Navigation errors lead to mistakes, which lead to visitors wasting time trying to resolve them, or abandoning a website altogether. Anything that can be done to interject, predict, and way-find around potential problems will reduce emissions over time.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
Tags
Compatibility, Content, Marketing, Networking, UI, Usability
Human-testable and Resources
Minimize the number of active environments, including virtualized environments (such as containers). Audit codebases for unused branches and environments and remove them as appropriate.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Decommission or switch off additional environments, such as testing / QA (Quality Assurance) / re-production and other such environments when they are not useful.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Hardware, Networking, Performance, Software
Human-testable and Resources
Automate recurring tasks, such as deployment, testing, and compilation in alignment with continuous integration and continuous delivery best practices.
Human-testable and Resources
Run automated tasks only when necessary to reduce unnecessary resource utilisation.
Human-testable and Resources
Use automated scaling to promptly adjust server capacity up or down based on demand, ensuring efficient resource allocation. Implement buffering and throttling to manage load and maintain performance without overprovisioning.
Machine-testable and Resources
Restrict the activity of unwanted and unnecessary third-party crawlers, suspicious user agents, unwanted visitors, bots, and scrapers from accessing or downloading your content. Follow best practices, such as server access rules and security tools, while ensuring your content remains accessible to users, search engines and any helpful, welcome crawlers. Consider that scrapers may be used to inform and train large language models.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Any tasks, especially repetitive, that can be automated should be automated (compilation, deployment, tests, etc.) to reduce time at the computer being wasted by people.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Performance, Security, Software
Machine-testable and Resources
Define the revalidation and refresh frequency for the cache, local data, and page content based on user needs, balancing performance, data accuracy, and resource efficiency.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Only send data from the server when the visitor needs it. As much as possible, you can rely on client-side or server-side cache and client-side / local storage. Rather than refreshing data on a given frequency, it might be up to the visitor to manually ask for a refresh.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
JavaScript, Networking, Performance, Usability
Human-testable and Resources
Ensure backups of system and user data are secure and incremental to minimize storage use, reduce backup time, and protect against data loss or breaches.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
For security reasons and in accordance with a Service-Level Agreement (SLA), it is often recommended to duplicate data to make sure it remains available if a problem occurs. This should be balanced with the cost of such duplication. Not all data is critical and, rather than overcompensating with multiple saves, duplication should be designed with efficiency in mind.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Hardware, Performance
Human-testable and Resources
Use existing and supported carbon-aware computing methods to automate batching and scheduling according to real-time electrical grid carbon intensity data or shift workloads to lower-carbon regions to optimize sustainability while maintaining performance.
Machine-testable and Resources
Choose communication protocols appropriate to visitor needs and the type of data being transferred. Avoid insecure options such as HTTP and FTP, and prioritize secure, efficient alternatives such as HTTPS and SSH. Use modern protocols to take advantage of newer features, while maintaining backward compatibility for older devices.
Human-testable and Resources
Consider using event-driven architecture and microservices when building products with state changes that do not require full page refreshes. Favor these where they offer a more energy-efficient alternative to traditional APIs based on performance, power, and processing factors. Choose the approach that reduces server workload and environmental impact.
Human-testable and Resources
Avoid redundant processing. When data processing is necessary, carefully compare the relative effects of client- versus server-side processing based on efficiency, performance, security, and sustainability metrics to make an informed decision.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Depending on carbon intensity, some processes and communications should be delayed and sometimes batched. Redundancy should be avoided wherever possible. This could also be a way to reduce the workload on a server or Virtual Machine (VM). In such cases, visitors should be warned that the process is asynchronous and notified when it is over.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
JavaScript, Networking, Performance
Machine-testable and Resources
Deploy static content, assets, and other read-only resources via a Content Delivery Network (CDN) on a case-by-case basis, where judged to be beneficial. Carefully evaluate the environmental impact of any CDN service used, similar to a web hosting provider.
Machine-testable and Resources
Select CDN providers that make commitments to sustainability and report on their progress.
Machine-testable and Resources
When serving an exclusively local audience, consider whether a CDN is required at all. Instead, select hosting providers with servers close to your target audience.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid deploying dynamic or frequently changing resources to a CDN. Browser behaviors such as cache partitioning and cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) can limit performance gains, hinder caching and interaction, and attempting to override these can introduce security or privacy risks. This does not apply to static assets or JSON files, which are well suited to CDN delivery.
Human-testable and Resources
Perform data transformations, transfers, and processing between the layers of an application as close to the source as possible. This reduces unnecessary serialization overhead and avoids wasting resources.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Edge caching and CDN delivery can help optimize the sustainable delivery of digital services by optimizing how your website's traffic is transferred over the internet.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Hardware, Networking, Performance
Human-testable and Resources
Select infrastructure that meets your requirements and customer agreements without over-provisioning. Favor standalone instances over multi-zone or distributed setups when requirements allow. Provision for average loads rather than peaks to ensure efficient resource use. Use autoscaling to handle fluctuations without underutilizing infrastructure.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Select infrastructure with minimal specifications meeting business requirements of performance, availability, etc.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
E-Waste, Hardware, Performance
Human-testable and Resources
Regularly audit for and delete redundant, abandoned, or single-use data - often referred to as dark data - to reduce storage demand and energy use.
Machine-testable and Resources
Assign expiration and/or maximum retention dates to stored data where appropriate, treating excess data as a form of technical debt. Simultaneously observe any applicable minimum data retention periods. Make data cleanup an established organization-wide routine to prevent long-term data accumulation.
Machine-testable and Resources
Implement a data classification and tagging policy to improve visibility, simplify management, and enable efficient removal of outdated or unused data.
Human-testable and Resources
Store data only when it cannot be easily or accurately regenerated.
Machine-testable and Resources
Optimize log collection and storage by scheduling backups during low-activity hours, rotating logs appropriately, and using off-site, sustainable providers.
Human-testable and Resources
Make large, long-term assets available for easy download in order to provide users with regular offline access without requiring persistant server resources.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Optimize storage of data according to what is most important, relevant, and required in service to visitors. This will help to avoid unnecessary storage of data that may not be useful or valuable, which will reduce required infrastructure, power, and data transfer.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
Accept-Encoding: zstd, gzip, br, deflate
Tags
Content, E-Waste, Hardware, Performance, Privacy
Designing websites and applications for better sustainability requires good business strategy and product management.
Anyone who owns, manages, or operates a website or application has significant capacity to improve the sustainability footprint of their organization. Business owners and other C-level executives are likely to be the main people responsible for the most impactful strategic decisions an organization can make. But all individuals working online can also make a big difference. Work in this area can improve the sustainability of various non-technical considerations that stretch beyond, or affect, a digital product or service.
Goals include:
Benefits include:
Machine-testable and Resources
Develop, publish and maintain key policies, such as a code of ethics, product guidelines, sustainability statements, and/or other documents that include language specific to digital products, services, policies, and programs. Make these publicly accessible and transparently versioned formats.
Machine-testable and Resources
Publish achievements, features, compliance, and anything beyond the scope of these guidelines within a dedicated sustainability section.
Human-testable and Resources
Provide evidence to demonstrate how digital sustainability policies, climate policies, and related practices are effectively implemented, monitored, and governed over time.
Human-testable and Resources
Provide training decks and workshops to support onboarding new team members in relation to sustainable product strategies.
Machine-testable and Resources
Document your methodology through impact storytelling, documentation, and creating resources to help individuals make more informed decisions and raise awareness among your visitors.
Machine-testable and Resources
Demonstrate how digital products and services are powered using renewable energy.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Create a publicly available statement in an easy-to-find location on your website that outlines a clear commitment to prioritize ethics and sustainability PPP standards that align with the organization's mission, vision, and values and include statements specific to digital products, services, policies, and programs. This should be done while actively promoting such efforts (with evidence) using social channels.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Education, Ideation, KPIs, Research, Social Equity, Strategy
Machine-testable and Resources
Assign a sustainability advocate with specific digital expertise and provide them with the resources, budget, tools, and time they need to achieve their stated goals. In some organizations, expanding this into a climate working group comprising motivated individuals can add further benefits.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Having someone within an organization who represents sustainability as a core agenda makes good sense due to the accessibility, performance, financial, and other benefits that can occur from following best practices. If the resources are available, a climate Working Group with willing participants could also be established.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Education, Ideation, Marketing, Social Equity
Human-testable and Resources
Inform and deliver training to all affected parties, including product teams, colleagues, and organizational decision-makers - both managers and clients - in both general and digital climate literacy, as well as your own sustainable technology policies.
Human-testable and Resources
Provide active and routine training where possible to develop, establish, and refresh skills relating to sustainability. This can be delivered as in-house training, courses, workshops, events, webinars, meetups, or other ongoing or on-demand methods that support your team in achieving sustainability objectives.
Machine-testable and Resources
Encourage participants to reduce their environmental impact. Share climate and sustainable initiatives and ideas. Provide resources on sustainable design, best practices, and concepts to assist them.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Businesses should not only reference their own materials showcasing how they are working towards becoming sustainable but cite existing sustainability best practices to help others looking to make similar changes within their own work or personal environments.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Education, Marketing, Reporting
Human-testable and Resources
Clearly communicate the environmental impact of different visitor choices and allow visitors to configure settings based on the information provided.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Allowing the visitor to take action to reduce their emissions is key to helping them play a part in becoming more sustainable. By helping them identify when choices they make could have an environmental impact (and by how much) and then providing them with the tooling choices to reduce their footprint, you can empower them to make a lasting difference.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Education, Marketing, Reporting
Human-testable and Resources
Conduct a full life-cycle analysis based on the functional unit defined under Guideline 5.15.
Machine-testable and Resources
Calculate the environmental impact of your or a competitor's current service to inform decision-making targets.
Human-testable and Resources
Include the impact or estimated impact of any tooling or third-party solutions used at any stage in your pipeline. While not created by you, the emissions generated in production, maintenance, and use are also integral to your overall solution.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Being able to identify key issues with your website or application is essential, and while not a foolproof method, using tooling can help you achieve an overall idea about the state of your product or service's environmental state (as such tools can do for accessibility).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Ideation, KPIs, Research, Social Equity, Software, Strategy
Machine-testable and Resources
Define and publish a clear set of sustainability goals. Publicly communicate how these goals can be met, including which performance metrics can be measured to help the organization and its various affected parties act more sustainably.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Define sustainability goals for the organization to meet and incorporate into its business model. Pair each goal with at least one clear, achievable metric or Key Performance Indicator (KPI).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Governance, Ideation, KPIs, Research, Social Equity
Machine-testable and Resources
Obtain one or more sustainability certifications and incorporate operational policies and practices in alignment with their guidance.
Human-testable and Resources
Maintains sustainability certifications through continuing to meet their criteria and evolving policies and practices over time.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Business certifications can fill the gaps left by incomplete sustainability legislation. Ensuring a business complies with third-party certifications will help verify and apply an objective level of rigor to an organization's sustainability efforts.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Governance, KPIs
Human-testable and Resources
Create and/or deliver dedicated training manuals, workshops, and materials to outline the sustainability policies and practices adopted and how to implement them. Manage and maintain these materials over time, adapting them as new policies and best practices arise.
Human-testable and Resources
Incentivize leadership, teams, and individuals to make progress toward the goals outlined in their training. Examples include dedicating time for sustainability-related activities, recognizing completion, and other benefits.
Human-testable and Resources
Anticipate and map potential negative external variables and act to minimize their overall impact.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization has clear onboarding and training processes that include PPP policies and practices with explicit references to digital sustainability and responsibility. Ensure that onboarding utilizes a "green by default" process and avoids being an opt-in procedure. This applies equally at an organizational level and to visitors and consumers of your products and services.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Education, Strategy
Machine-testable and Resources
Create and publish policies and practices to disclose the social and environmental impacts of its products, programs, and services in line with existing reporting standards such as GRI, SASB, etc.
Machine-testable and Resources
Produce a publicly available impact report outlining progress compared to previous reports on social and environmental goals at least once per year.
Machine-testable and Resources
Publicly and transparently demonstrate commitment over time to following and adopting existing and/or emerging environmental standards and legislative policy that promotes mandatory emissions disclosures and reporting.
Human-testable and Resources
Clearly identify how environmental impact is being reduced, with careful avoidance of double accounting, greenwashing, data exclusion, or other misleading or manipulative techniques.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization discloses and reports its PPP impact on at least an annual basis.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, KPIs, Reporting
Human-testable and Resources
Complete and operationalize a theory of change process with requisite documentation to identify the impact the organization aspires to achieve, how it will generate revenue, how it will create shared or added value from these activities, and how it will measure results based on desired outcomes. In the case of projects already underway, how these are generating revenue and actively tracking and measuring progress against desired outcomes.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
An Impact Business Model enables an organization to incorporate specific impact initiatives into one or more business models for generating revenue, often making them "green by default" and folding impact initiatives into the organization's operating system. Moreover, being able to calculate the return on investment in terms of sustainability your product or service will bring is important to identifying whether it poses a net-positive or net-negative effect on the environment.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Ideation, Research, Strategy
Machine-testable and Resources
Produce and maintain documentation to outline how the organization approaches product management and maintenance.
Human-testable and Resources
Establish maintenance and security plans for all digital products and services.
Human-testable and Resources
Appropriately resource products over time via staffing and budgeting to support code refactoring, address technical debt, introduce new product features, test functionality, and produce product or service maintenance plans to continue supporting customers, visitors, and other affected parties.
Human-testable and Resources
Incorporate carbon and resource measurement into maintenance programs and show measurable improvement over time.
Human-testable and Resources
Identify and document Key Failure Indicators (KFIs) and implement resolutions to prevent negative sustainability impacts.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization has clearly defined governance policies around how it manages and maintains digital products and services over time.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Compatibility, Strategy
Human-testable and Resources
Establish policies and practices to enable continuous improvement and resource practices appropriately to support these efforts over time.
Human-testable and Resources
Review deliverables and update frequency to ensure project teams have enough time to conduct user research, identify technical debt, and produce high-quality output as well as share what they learned.
Machine-testable and Resources
Display a track record of continuous improvement (iteration) processes to analyze the digital product or service. Simultaneously address any potential consequences of ongoing experimentation, such as technical debt, product performance, and emissions. Analytics are limited to strictly necessary features that aid decision-making, encouraging visitor feedback, and comparing performance against business goals and visitor needs.
Human-testable and Resources
Justify and prioritize the retention of existing features, the creation of new functionality, and the decommissioning or elimination of unused functionality or low-traffic content throughout the product's life cycle on a case-by-case basis.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide corrective security and policy updates during the product or service life cycle. These should be distinguished from more extensive evolutionary updates.
Human-testable and Resources
Develop sustainable product and data strategies using appropriate training techniques. These should help your team build capacity and learn new skills to manage and maintain products and services over time.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization has policies and practices in place to embrace experimentation, foster a growth mindset, support organizational agility, and provide continuous improvement. Product creators should iterate, regularly, though never at the cost of getting things done (such as working on larger, long-term features).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Compatibility, KPIs, Performance, Security, Strategy, UI
Human-testable and Resources
When a feature is added, updated, or removed to improve user experience, clear documentation of the changes is provided in a well structured, semantically versioned document.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Products or services are updated regularly. Ensure that additions, changes, deprecations, removals, fixes, or security patches are documented in an easy-to-perceive document with details that showcase how such changes affect the visitor (or how they can take advantage of new features).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
# Changelog - Website ## [Unreleased] - N/A ## 1.0.0 - YYYY-MM-DD ### Added - Content. ## [Guide] - Added: New features. - Changed: Altered functionality. - Deprecated: Disappearing features. - Removed: Eliminated features. - Fixed: Bugs patched. - Security: Solved vulnerabilities.
Tags
Compatibility, Content, Education, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify where the product or service aligns with one of the U.N. (SDGs) and its appropriate targets within a sustainability statement.
Human-testable and Resources
Determine that the product or service is necessary based upon desirability, feasibility, and viability factors.
Human-testable and Resources
Establish that no existing digital product or service offers the same value. Conduct an analysis to understand the market for this requirement.
Human-testable and Resources
Remove or alleviate any obstacles to using a product or service, such as accessibility, equality, technical, or territorial.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Ensure that the product or service you are creating offers value to visitors and doesn't duplicate existing functionality (without bringing something new to the table) as this redundancy wastes digital and physical resources.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
E-Waste, Ideation, Reporting, Software
Human-testable and Resources
Conduct a life-cycle assessment (LCA) to define sustainability-related functional impacts throughout a product's lifetime.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The functional unit of a product is a quantified description of the performance requirements that the product fulfills. Ensure you identify the requirements of your product before development.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Ideation, Reporting, Research
Machine-testable and Resources
Create specific policies to vet potential partners along the supply chain based on sustainability principles.
Human-testable and Resources
Partner with suppliers to create, track and measure impact on issues that impact affected parties.
Machine-testable and Resources
Promote and disclose partnerships in a publicly available place, along with information on how the partnership creates a collective impact.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization collaborates with suppliers, authors, clients, and other partners on initiatives that are both mutually beneficial and create positive social and environmental outcomes.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Governance, Hardware, Ideation, Social Equity
Machine-testable and Resources
Publicly commit to paying employees, contractors, and other affected parties a living wage.
Human-testable and Resources
Have policies and practices to incentivize affected parties, such as workers and contractors, to meet impact goals.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide benefits to employees in accordance with resources, including, where relevant, healthcare, retirement planning, flex time, profit sharing, and more.
Human-testable and Resources
Advocate for responsible legislation that supports employment rights, transparency, and accountability related to sharing economic benefits.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization shares the economic benefits of its digital products, services, policies, and programs.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Governance, Social Equity
Human-testable and Resources
Align the project team's goals with key business objectives, and affected parties (for example, project managers) have the power and autonomy to make key decisions on the organization's behalf.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Ensuring that everyone has a seat at the table is important to promoting voices who may not otherwise have their voices heard, and potentially getting useful ideas from fresh sources.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Ideation, Social Equity, Strategy
Human-testable and Resources
Document commitments to JEDI practices with clear policies on how marginalized or otherwise underserved communities are prioritized.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish a publicly displayed accessibility policy and demonstrate this via accessible digital products or services.
Human-testable and Resources
Provide JEDI-related training materials and schedule regular workshops related to how this topic manifests itself in digital products and services, covering topics such as algorithmic bias, digital divide, employment, mis- and disinformation.
Human-testable and Resources
Show measurable improvement over time across hiring, leadership, and operations.
Human-testable and Resources
Advocate for responsible legislation relating to JEDI practices, especially as they relate to digital products and services.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization has public policies and practices supporting racial justice, inclusion, equity, and diversity in hiring and operations.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Ideation, Social Equity, Strategy
Machine-testable and Resources
Maintain a publicly accessible privacy policy, terms and conditions, and any other documents as required by law in the jurisdictions in which the product or service operates. Adhere to the most restrictive data protection regulations, especially when providing services outside the organization's country. Provide documents in accessible formats and use clear, user-friendly language to ensure comprehension by all visitors. Avoid unnecessary jargon, technical language, and legalese. Support emerging legislation and implement best practices related to data privacy, sustainability, and responsible data management.
Human-testable and Resources
Demonstrate measurable progress over time in regard to respecting data privacy and ownership. Specify how data disposal and a visitor's "right to be forgotten" will be handled, along with ownership rights. Also, provide the ability to download or export data they have contributed into a non-proprietary format.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization commits to responsible data practices, prioritizing data privacy, security, and ethical use. This includes data minimization, purpose limitation, accuracy, storage limitation, integrity, confidentiality, and accountability. Publicly accessible documentation, such as Privacy Policies and Terms and Conditions, follows best practices for clarity and accessibility, avoiding technical jargon and complex legal language to ensure inclusivity for diverse users.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Governance, Privacy, Social Equity
Machine-testable and Resources
Archive and delete outdated or otherwise expired product content and data via automated expiration dates and scheduled product audits. Publish the archiving schedule, ensuring a lightweight version of the old searchable content is maintained for those that may require it.
Machine-testable and Resources
Allow users to control, manage, and delete their data, subscriptions, and accounts.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Expired or unused data has a cost, takes up space, and requires maintenance. As such, the ability for customers to manage their own data and for service providers to manage older website material which no longer applies but might still have use will be a carbon benefit.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Privacy, Security, Social Equity, Strategy
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish public-facing policies for emerging technologies. Ensure all such technologies and their datasets are ethically sourced, screened, validated, and implemented in a non-discriminatory, responsible manner.
Human-testable and Resources
Show how workers are trained as new technologies and practices potentially disrupt an organisations business model.
Human-testable and Resources
Support and comply with responsible legislation related to emerging technologies
Human-testable and Resources
Audit and account for any environmental considerations that may derive from the use of emerging technologies wishing to be promoted or implemented. This should include third-party choices, the expense in terms of waste or emissions of using the technology to create a desired result, and consequences that may arise from its deployment.
Human-testable and Resources
Ensure all automated tooling, scrapers, spiders, bots, artificial intelligence, and other forms of machine-assisted data gathering abides by requests to opt out at the host, server, or website level. Providers must declare themselves as non-human within the user-agent/HTTP header. Providers must also publish impact reports relating to their gathering activities.
Human-testable and Resources
Do not roll out post-quantum encryption for high-traffic services that do not need resilience against harvest now, decrypt later attacks, where attackers steal encrypted data, anticipating that future quantum computers will be powerful enough to break the encryption and make the data readable at a later date.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization has devised and implemented responsible policies related to artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), Web3 (Decentralized Web, blockchain, etc), and related emerging technologies.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, E-Waste, Governance, Hardware, Networking, Performance, Privacy, Security, Social Equity, Software
Machine-testable and Resources
Divest from fossil fuels and move banking, sponsorship, and other affiliations to more responsible partners.
Human-testable and Resources
Engage in flexible financing and responsible budgeting to accommodate long-term care and maintenance.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization implements responsible finance strategies, including divesting from fossil fuels and appropriately resourcing digital products and services to account for long-term care and maintenance.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Governance, Ideation, Social Equity
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish a clear corporate giving policy and create philanthropic partnerships with strategically aligned organizations.
Human-testable and Resources
Engage in free or volunteer projects to help teams learn new tools and tactics, while also helping charities and non-profit organizations to build capacity.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
For-profit organizations have clear philanthropy policies and practices in place to help non-profit organizations build digital capacity and acumen while also engaging their own teams in meaningful work that promotes shared learning and stretch goals.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Governance, Social Equity
Human-testable and Resources
Provide clear, documented end-of-life guidelines that include data disposal, archiving, file deletion, and other relevant guidance.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Everything ends at some point, planning for if and when a product or service is finalized makes good ethical sense to ensure customers can be transitioned toward a replacement rather than losing access to their data.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Compatibility, E-Waste, Research, Social Equity, Software, Strategy
Human-testable and Resources
Establish specific policies around e-waste recycling and repair owned technology products whenever possible.
Human-testable and Resources
Form relationships with local partners for e-waste recycling and repair.
Human-testable and Resources
Buy refurbished equipment whenever possible.
Human-testable and Resources
Allow consumers to repair the consumables they purchase to the best of their ability, offering replacement components if possible at cost, and provide clear instructions to help resolve faults that occur.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization addresses e-waste, right-to-repair, recycling, and related practices in its operations.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, E-Waste, Governance, Hardware, Ideation, Social Equity
Machine-testable and Resources
Define and document clear sustainability budget criteria that covers impact from creation to consumption. Communicate this to affected parties.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use a performance budget to set a target maximum size of your digital product or service to monitor and reduce impact of data transfer, file type size, and more.
Human-testable and Resources
Define KPIs around engineering hours, development time, or sprints while keeping the health and well-being of your workers paramount. Sustainably optimize workflows to allow all tasks to be performed with care.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish a baseline and measurement criteria to track improvements over time. Improvement claims must be evidenced and verifiable.
Human-testable and Resources
Invest in resources to build capacity and maintain budgets over time.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Setting targets and limits regarding your product or service is important for keeping a sustainable mindset. Using budgets, you can declare the remits of which you will work within to ensure your emissions do not fall outside (and monitor your progress through development).
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
[
{
"resourceSizes": [],
"timings": [
{
"metric": "largest-contentful-paint",
"budget": 2500
},
{
"metric": "max-potential-fid",
"budget": 100
},
{
"metric": "cumulative-layout-shift",
"budget": 0.1
}
]
}
]
Tags
Accessibility, Ideation, KPIs, Performance, Research, Usability
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish a clear open source policy that outlines how open-source tools are used and any practices used to support open-source development.
Human-testable and Resources
Show a track record of collaboration and building communities around open-source principles.
Machine-testable and Resources
Contribute regularly in terms of code, human-time, and/or financially, to open-source community-based projects.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
The organization has clear policies about using open source tools, including how it gives back to the community and responsibly manages code repositories to reduce waste.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Ideation, Social Equity, Software, UI
Human-testable and Resources
Create, regularly review, and occasionally test a plan of action to determine readiness in case of an incident and establish procedures to quickly recover from any incident.
Machine-testable and Resources
Maintain regular and transparent communication with the audience regarding issues that may affect service delivery or user data.
This section is non-normative.
Intent
Resilience of the product or service in case of a disaster or emergency should be ensured to restore and maintain operations in case of disruptions.
Impact and Effort
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Governance, Security, Strategy
Guidelines within this specification which the Interest Group has identified possible implications for accessibility, privacy, or security, either by providing protections for end users or which are important for website providers to take in to consideration when implementing features designed to implement digital sustainability, are listed below. This list reflects the current understanding of the Interest Group but other guidelines may have implications that the Interest Group is not aware of at the time of publishing.
Individuals or organizations wishing to understand more about best practices relating to these objectives should read the relevant materials provided by W3C Working and Interest Groups in this area, as the result of good accessibility, privacy, and security, can benefit both people and the planet in measurable ways.
It is relevant to note that groups working on accessibility, privacy, and security may identify sustainability impacts within their work and may provide relevant guidance where appropriate on best practices to limit the scope of these concerns. Any such guidance should be considered as complementary to that provided within the WSG.
Guidelines within this specification that may relate to accessibility are:
Guidelines within this specification that may relate to privacy are:
Guidelines within this specification that may relate to security are:
Web accessibility (within the context of Inclusive Design) means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities (and those without) can use them, free of barriers.
Types of accessibility barriers can include auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech, and visual. They can also be permanent, temporary, or situational (depending on the situation).
Planet, People, and Prosperity (PPP) is a set of principles that recommends considering each of these factors during the sustainability process.
This method of considering both people and the planet (alongside the needs of business) is known under other abbreviations with similar objectives such as Environmental, Social, and (corporate) Governance (ESG), which considers economic variables alongside; there is also Environment, Equity, and Economy (EEE) that follow a similar pattern.
Such work is grounded within the three pillars of sustainability:
For information purposes and not required for compliance.
Content identified as "informative" or "non-normative" is never required for compliance.
Required for compliance.
An approach to designing digital products and services that puts people and the planet first.
Aiming for a clean (hosted using renewables), efficient (using the fewest resources possible), open (accessible and user-controlled data), honest (avoiding misleading or exploiting visitors), regenerative (support people and the planet), and resilient (function under any circumstances) service or product.
Within the context of this specification:
In many cases, visitor and user on the web are used interchangeably (and this is perfectly acceptable), but we have chosen to make this distinction to provide context that in certain cases, individuals (for privacy reasons or simply because certain users just glancing or certain websites having static content) may not be classified as a user (in the sense of a customer) as they are a window shopper (visitor).
Additional information about participation in the Sustainable Web Interest Group can be found within the GitHub repository of the Interest Group.
Alexander Dawson, Andrea Davanzo, Andrew Wright, Andy Blum, Anne Faubry, Arnaud Levy, Ben Clifford, Berwyn Powell, Brett Tackaberry, Brian Louis Ramirez, Chris Adams, Chris Augier, Chris Butterworth, Chris Needham, Chris Sater, Chris Wilson, Claire Thornewill, Daniel Appelquist, David Jeanmonod, Dennis Lemm, Diogo Abrantes Da Silva, Dom Robinson, Dominique Hazael-Massieux, Emily Trotter, Fershad Irani, Francesco Fullone, François Burra, Gaël Duez, Hidde De Vries, Iain McClenaghan, Ian Jacobs, Ines Akrap, Ismael Velasco, Iulia Raluca Ionita, James Christie, Jeffrey Yasskin, Jennifer Strickland, Jens Oliver Meiert, Jim McCool, Josh Kim, Julien Wilhelm, Kazuhito Kidachi, Laurent Devernay Satyagraha, Len Dierickx, Leon Brocard, Łukasz Mastalerz, Marie Ototoi, Michelle Barker, Mike Gifford, Morgan Murrah, Nahuai Badiola, Neil Clark, Nick Doty, Nicola Bonotto, Nick Lewis, Orie Steele, Owen Barton, Owen Rogers, Peter Krautzberger, Philippe Le Hégaret, Romuald Priol, Rose Newell, Rudolf Van Der Berg, Ryan Sholin, Sandy Dähnert, Sarah Zama, Shane Herath, Simon Perdrisat, Susannah Hill, Tantek Çelik, Thibaud Colas, Thorsten Jonas, Tim Frick, Tzviya Siegman, Youen Chéné, Yuna Orsini, Zoe Lopez-Latorre.
Adam Newman, Aiste Rugeviciute, Alekh Gupta, Alicia Pritchett, Alisa Bonsignore, Anthony Vallée-Dubois, Antoine Abélard, Asim Hussain, Bee Flaherty, Boris Schapira, Brian Sharpe, Carine Bournez, Christian H Brown, Christophe Clouzeau, Christos Bacharakis, Crystal Preston-Watson, Danielle Subject, Denis Didier, Edward Bender, Elise West, Eloisa Guerrero, Emma Horrell, Florence Maurice, Gerry McGovern, Greg McDonald, Hannah Smith, Ignacio Rondini, Ivano Malavolta, James Cannings, James Gallagher, Jan Henckens, Jean Rigotti, Jeroen Hulscher, Jon Gibbins, Juan Sotés, Julien Robitaille, Kate Mroczkowski, Katya Dreyer-Oren, Kimi Wei, Laila Tamani, Leah Goldfarb, Lenchi Danch, Loren Velasquez, Louise Towler, Luciene Bulhões Mattos, Luis Tiago, Manfred Jurgovsky, Marie Koesnodihardjo, Mark Butcher, Marketa Benisek, Mert Altinöz, Michelle Sanver, Moritz Guth, Nick Oliveira, Nick Sollecito, Nicolas Lanthemann, Nicholas Oliveira, Nicolas Oren, Oliver Winks, Patrick Hypscher, Pietro Jarre, Radu Micu, Rafael Lebre, Rebecca Brocton, Rick Butterfield, Rick Viscomi, Robin Whittleton, Samuel Pitoňák, Sandra Pallier, Sarven Capadisli, Sebastien Solere, Sylvain Tenier, Thierry Leboucq, Thomas Alexander Munch-Woolff, Tom Greenwood, Tom Howells, Torsten Beyer, Tristan Nitot, Yelle Lieder, Youcef Bekhti.
Note that this changelog only identifies substantive changes since the final draft Community Group Report dated Dec 6, 2024.
For a list of all issues addressed, refer to the Interest Group and former Community Group issue trackers.
Additions:
Updates:
Fixes:
Additions:
Updates:
Fixes:
Additions:
Updates:
Fixes:
If you spot any new bugs, or have new content or ideas to include, submit an issue.