This is actually the problem with a lot of the W3C standards (I should know I've worked on 3). Often times the working groups identify a problem that needs to

This is actually the problem with a lot of the W3C standards (I should know I've worked on 3). Often times the working groups identify a problem that needs to be solved, but there isn't a solution. The web moves so fast there is this great desire to bring things together as soon as new trend emerges. However, the point of standards is for a lot of experimentation to have happened so that some consensus about what works and what doesn't can happen. Doug is absolutely right, standards and research don't mix. I believe this is one of the reasons one of the standards I worked on (WCAG 2) took around 8 years to create. Starting WCAG 2 hot on the heels of WCAG 1 meant that the industry hadn't figured out how to do accessibility, for whatever socio-political reasons. As such the 8 years was more the time it took for patterns to emerge as to good practice than it was the working group's inability to understand the problem, or apply appropriate definitions and constraints.