On April 13, a webinar on Universal Acceptance in Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific Region was organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS Forum 2021). It was moderated by Chief Analyst of the Coordination Center Maria Kolesnikova; Youth Projects Coordinator Ilona Stadnik was responsible for supporting those joining the event remotely.
Universal Acceptance experts from all around the world took part in the discussion, including Manal Ismail (NTRA, Egypt), Aman Masjide (Radix, India), Grigory Sagiyan (ISOC Armenia, Armenia), Dusan Stojicevic (Gransy, Serbia), Emily Taylor (Oxford Information Labs, UK), Jiankang Yao (CNNIC, China). The experts discussed the level of awareness regarding Universal Acceptance in their countries and the opportunities that end users will get thanks to UA. They also made suggestions on engaging businesses and governments in supporting and promoting UA to develop multilingualism on the internet and create local content in Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific Region.
“What do you actually know about Universal Acceptance? Many people do not even know what this term means; that’s why experts offered their plain language definition today and explained which groups of stakeholders are taking part in promoting Universal Acceptance as well as which aspects of the internet are affected by it. It was stressed during the webinar that the implementation of universal support of multilingual domain names and email addresses must not affect the end users as it is a task for the tech industry, governments and businesses that are interested in improving user experience and creating an inclusive and natural internet environment for all users. Experts also outlined specific steps that could be taken in this area,” Maria Kolesnikova concluded.
This year’s World Summit on the Information Society is being completely held online. Running since January, the forum holds weekly seminars organized by representatives from different countries, as well as high-level meetings on policies, special courses on various topics, hackathons and virtual exhibitions. The final week of the online WSIS Forum 2021 is scheduled for May 17−21, 2021, and will include remarks by and interactive dialogues between high-level representatives, the WSIS awards ceremony, a ministerial roundtable discussion and a series of meetings on the areas of focus of the WSIS.
