The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ is holding the Domain Marathon, a series of events related to the domain industry, at the Russian Internet Week (RIW 20/21). Participants will learn about Universal Acceptance, discuss the technical aspects of implementing internationalized services on the internet, talk about the changes the internet addressing space has seen over the past decade, and identify international initiatives in the field of developing internet identifier internalization and their Universal Acceptance that are trending now.
In addition, the Поддерживаю.РФ project has a stand at VDNKh’s Smart City Pavilion, where everyone can ask experts their questions about how to ensure Universal Acceptance and introduce Cyrillic domains and emails.
The section “History of internet internationalization, or when will Russian users be able to work completely in Russian on the internet?” opened by Andrey Vorobyev, Director of the Coordination Center, kicked off the Domain Marathon. He noted that many Russian and international organizations are working on this problem.
“Although non-Latin domains have existed for 11 years now, Universal Acceptance is still lacking,” Andrey Vorobyev stressed.
Vadim Mikhailov, Поддерживаю.РФ Technical Consultant, presented the history of internet internationalization as well as the current development of IDNs in Russia and all over the world. He noted that the trend towards internationalization is growing all around the world. Developers can see this trend and introduce solutions to ensure Universal Acceptance in their products.
“Of course, this increases the internet’s inclusivity and the online engagement of those segments of the population who do not speak English. Numerous standards that can and should be used have been developed for these purposes, as well as many tools that help introduce Universal Acceptance,” Vadim Mikhailov added. He also focused on the need to strengthen state support for the introduction of Cyrillic domains and emails.
Maria Kolesnikova, Chief Analyst at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and Chair of the Russian Universal Acceptance Steering Group, spoke about the development of the Cyrillic alphabet on the internet, existing technological solutions used to support Cyrillic domains and emails, and the work underway as part the Поддерживаю.РФ project, the Russian Universal Acceptance Steering Group and the CIS and East European local initiative on Universal Acceptance.
Mikhail Anisimov, ICANN Head of Global Stakeholder Engagement for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, talked about ICANN’s areas of work and plans to ensure Universal Acceptance.
“We believe that domains in non-Latin languages will make up a large part of the next New gTLD wave. We are adding a billion new users, and we have to take their capabilities into consideration and make the internet more inclusive,” he added.
