A new service that allows users to send in information about problems with support for Cyrillic domain names and email addresses in software and online services is available on the Поддерживаю.РФ website.
Now Runet users can report problems they discover when using internationalized domain names and email addresses in Russian on websites and applications. Then the project team will consolidate this data and, together with recommendations for ensuring support for IDN and EAI standards, will send it to the developers of a specific software or online project.
According to Maria Kolesnikova, the manager of the Поддерживаю.РФ project, the service, similar to the IDN Bug Bounty program, will operate on a permanent basis, is available to everyone, and does not require a training course or knowledge of universal acceptance.
“We also plan to use this service to analyze the state of support for Cyrillic domain names in various economic sectors in order to assess what to focus our efforts on,” said Maria Kolesnikova.
“According to a study conducted by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) last year, Russia ranked second in the world in terms of readiness to work with email addresses in the national language: 19% of Runet sites process Cyrillic email addresses. The greatest readiness to work with email addresses using the local alphabet was shown by Russian websites in the category of e-commerce (30%), online education (25%) and the banking sector (20%). In other industries, the level of EAI support is not very high yet,” she added.
The Поддерживаю.РФ project was created by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ in 2020 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Russian top-level domain .РФ. It is designed to help software developers implement full-fledged support of Cyrillic domain names and email addresses in their products, and to help system administrators choose and configure software that has such functionality. The project website contains Russian-language documentation on working with IDNs and EAI, including standards and best practices for their processing in software, as well as a constantly updated catalog of software products indicating their current IDN and EAI support status.
