The Web Accessibility Initiative, or WAI, is the branch of the World Wide Web Consortium that focuses on the accessibility of the Internet to people with disabilities. There are four primary areas in which the WAI pursues accessibility of the Web: guidelines, education, technology, and tools.
WAI's Education and Outreach Working Group has the task of developing strategies and training resources, and raising the awareness to the Web community to the need for an accessible Web. They do this through the production of hand outs, technical references, fact sheets, and resource networks. Their Web resource, "Getting Started: Making a Web Site Accessible", is useful as a starting point for learning about Web accessibility.
WAI's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group develops guidelines for accessibility Web sites. Their current set of guidelines are used by many auditing tools for assessing accessibility.
The Protocols and Formats Working Group evaluates web technologies with respect to accessibility. One of their main goals is ensuring the core Web technologies do not present barriers to disabled people accessing the Web. They do this by monitoring W3C and other technologies throughout development.
The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group sets standards for Web authoring tools and ensures that these tools conform to W3C standards. This entails working with authoring tool developers so that new development tools make authoring accessible web pages easier.