Web Sustainability Guidelines is now in v1.0!

As a bit of light weekend reading, I took a look at the recently published Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) 1.0.

First up, wow! What a great effort by all those in the WSG Working Group to put together such a comprehensive set of guidelines that go beyond just the code we write to get a website online. Well done to all those involved over the last few years to get this into the world.

What struck me the most about these guidelines is just how much crossover there is between web sustainability, performance, and accessibility. I really believe that in the next few years we'll see web/digital sustainability follow the same path as accessibility and performance - going from something that was fringe concern for many organisations to becoming a requirement for most projects.

The amount of crossover between these areas also lends itself to making web sustainability an easier sell to be included in a project's scope. Rather than it being a set of additional requirements developers would need to be mindful of, it can be more like "hey, let's do this thing that will make our site faster and also lower its overall energy usage", or "how about we improve the accessibility of this feature, which will also result in users finding what they need faster". I think this is a good thing, as it makes it less daunting to look for ways to make a site more sustainable. Heck, I reckon most folks have already implemented some things from the WSG without even having thought about the sustainability implications.

Being sustainable should be frictionless, and I think these Web Sustainability Guidelines do a great job of emphasising that for the web.