On May 5, 2021, Armenia's IDN, .հայ, marked its 5th anniversary. To honor this occasion, the ISOC Armenia public organization has planned five events to promote IDNs in .հայ and popularize content in Armenian.
The first event, a roundtable on Promotion of .հայ domain zone, was attended by representatives from the government, businesses and public organizations, as well as the heads and employees of the registry managing Armenia’s country-code TLDs, .am /. հայ. The purpose of the discussion was to analyze the current situation, and to identify growth points for .հայ as well as to draw up a roadmap for the domain industry’s development in the region.
The participants were briefed on the history and recent statistics for .հայ. They also discussed what universal acceptance is, considered some technical aspects of EAI implementation and spoke with the invited government representatives about the possibilities of cooperating and getting support for promoting and popularizing the use of the Armenian language online, including in domain names and email addresses.
Maria Kolesnikova, chief analyst at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, was invited to speak at the roundtable. The national registries of Russia and Armenia are linked by a long-standing friendship, and colleagues on both sides are always ready to share useful experience and expertise. In the process of presenting her remarks, Maria spoke about the activities of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) for CIS and Eastern Europe, which also includes Armenia. She also shared information about the approaches to liaising with government agencies, how the government reacts to relevant questions about the widespread implementation of universal acceptance, and what assistance government agencies can provide to the national registry when it comes to this matter.
“Achieving universal acceptance of all domain names and email addresses in all software products is a challenge that can only be talked about with vigorous engagement and cooperation of many stakeholders. The state plays one of the key roles in achieving this. At the same time, universal acceptance is one of the factors of promoting the presence of national languages on the internet, which means it is in the scope of interests of any state, considering the growing numbers of internet users who do not know the English language. According to statistics, more than 70 percent of internet users in the world are not native English speakers,” Maria Kolesnikova noted.
