The public does care about standards.
Mendelson 14 – Joseph L. Sax Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, J.D. from Yale University.
Nina Mendelson, “Private Control over Access to Public Law: The Perplexing Federal Regulatory Use of Private Standards,” Michigan Law Scholarship Repository, 03-01-2014, https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/887/
One could raise a number of objections. Perhaps individuals are not beating down the doors of SDOs to read these standards. Then greater public access would not increase accountability. Numerous public comments filed to the OFR in 2012 on incorporation by reference, however, came from concerned individuals and small businesses seeking to read the standards.306 Owing to the challenges of locating IBR material on websites and the cost of access, the number of individual requests SDOs have received for these standards and the number of challenges to the standards almost certainly understate the amount of public interest in reading them. Further, the OFR is proposing to eliminate regulatory restrictions, beyond reducing the volume of the Federal Register, on the sort of private standards an agency can incorporate by reference. This is likely to increase the number of rules of general public interest that are incorporated by reference.