The geospatial community has, for some time, recognized that there is a disconnect between maps on the web and the underlying technology upon which web maps build. On one hand, the web standards and web browsers do not properly consider the needs of web maps. On the other, web map implementations are typically JavaScript libraries that do not leverage the strengths of the web platform but instead work against it to achieve the desired interaction model. The geospatial community set out to address this by proposing a new markup language for maps and extensions to HTML.
Maps on the web today are not sufficiently accessible; people who use assistive technologies such as screen readers are often not able to access and understand information on a web map. Furthermore, web maps as they are available today have suboptimal performance in terms of loading time and responsiveness, which at best is a suboptimal user experience and at worst excludes access for users with very slow internet connections or low-end devices. These problems could potentially be solved by implementing features and capabilities related to maps in web browsers. However, this work suffers from lack of browser vendor participation, and so is not yet being considered for implementation.