On November 16, IGF 2020 participants attended the section Universal Acceptance of Domain Names and Email Addresses, moderated by Maria Kolesnikova, Chief Analyst at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ.
Predictably, the topic of Universal Acceptance figures prominently in the IGF program because its provision is no longer seen as a purely technical problem. Maria Kolesnikova emphasized this when opening the session. She noted that now Universal Acceptance is not just a question of support for local languages and scripts for domain names and email addresses, but is connected with social and economic relations. It is necessary to look for ways to overcome the disproportions between supply and demand. Today, developers do not see any long-term demand for online Universal Acceptance support services. In turn, users are unable to make more active use of these services because of the lack of technical support.
Section speakers and participants shared their experience and discussed the challenges and problems they face, while introducing the Universal Acceptance concept. They also focused on specific measures that can motivate the technical community and users to help solve these problems and make the internet truly multi-lingual and all-inclusive.
In his remarks, Ajay Data from India’s Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) discussed the various advantages that will be gained from the large-scale introduction of Universal Acceptance. According to the speaker, it will allow an additional one billion users who do not speak English to gain access to the internet. Naturally, this will help expand businesses that are ready to use Universal Acceptance with potential advantages from its wider introduction. Moreover, Ajay Data shared the story of India’s success, namely, the launch of seven million Hindi-language email addresses using the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technology.
Japan’s Akinori Maemura from ICANN said the introduction of all-out internet access, including by using Universal Acceptance technologies, was a high-priority ICANN task. He recalled that the use of top-level internationalized domain names (IDNs) was part of a 2009 program to expand the global domain space, and that ICANN experts have been maintaining the stable and trouble-free work of new IDNs for over ten years.
Other participants also discussed how the widespread introduction of Universal Acceptance would benefit the Internet. For example, Joanna Kulesza from Poland’s At-Large agreed with Ajay Data’s arguments that Universal Acceptance allows clients to use the internet more effectively and noted the importance of raising public awareness of the Universal Acceptance concept and the Internet’s overall organization among various user groups. Walter Wu from China’s Internet Dot Trademark Organization Limited said that although over two million internationalized domain names were registered in China, Universal Acceptance remained a major problem in China because many internet browsers did not support IDNs, and because messenger software did not show IDNs as hyperlinks.
This makes IDNs impracticable, a major problem.
“Businesses can lose potential traffic or potential clients. Although there are about two million registrations in China, one can seldom see IDNs on advertising posters,” he added.
How can clients be motivated to make more active use of IDNs? And how can developers be motivated to take the necessary steps to introduce the Universal Acceptance concept everywhere? Maria Kolesnikova summed up the outcome of the discussion and singled out the main proposals, voiced by section participants. “Governments can set an example by using IDNs in emails and on government websites. They can also conduct a certain public procurement policy, so as to motivate the developer community to work on Universal Acceptance solutions. It is also necessary to train end users how to use all national-language capabilities online. Work with global technical leaders and the technical community to introduce UA principles in their products and services remains a high priority,” she said.
