On June 11, the ICANN83 conference hosted a session dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) and the future plans of the global ICANN community in advancing its implementation. Attendees reflected on the group’s inception by inviting all three former UASG chairs to speak: Ram Mohan, who held the position from 2015 to 2019; Ajay Data, who led UASG until 2023; and the current chair, Anil Kumar Jain.
They recounted the progress of universal acceptance implementation since 2001, when the first “new” domains – .info and .museum – were introduced, followed by top level internationalized domains. They shared insights, key takeaways, and their perspectives on the future of universal acceptance.
Experts who contributed to the UASG over the years also spoke, including Maria Kolesnikova, Chief Analyst at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ. Maria served as Chair of the UASG Communications Working Group in 2021 and has been the longstanding Chair of the Local Universal Acceptance Initiative for CIS and Eastern Europe since 2019. She expressed gratitude for the support provided by the UASG and ICANN to local initiatives and highlighted her group’s six years of work.
“These have been highly productive years, with our members achieving significant milestones in universal acceptance awareness, education, and implementation across the region,” Maria Kolesnikova noted.
She also reminded everyone that, in addition to the regional local initiative, the Russian Working Group on Universal Acceptance is actively engaged in addressing issues related to Cyrillic internet identifiers in Russia.
Senior ICANN leadership participated in the session, including ICANN Board Member and Chair of the Board Internationalized Domain Names-Universal Acceptance (IDN-UA) Working Group Maarten Botterman, as well as ICANN President and CEO Kurtis Lindqvist. They congratulated the group on its 10th anniversary and underscored UASG’s immense contribution to dismantling technical and systemic barriers that once prevented large parts of the world from participating in the digital economy.
Sarmad Hussain, ICANN’s Senior Director IDN and UA Programs, summarized UASG’s decade of achievements. In his article, he emphasized that the UASG was established to make the internet truly global through Universal Acceptance.
“The vision was simple, yet profound – an Internet where people around the world can use the domain name and email address of their choice, regardless of language or script. As we reflect on a decade of progress, this milestone provides us with a chance to look back, celebrate the community’s achievements, and reaffirm our commitment to linguistic diversity and digital inclusivity for billions of Internet users worldwide. This important anniversary was marked by a celebration at ICANN83 in Prague, where community members came together to honor the UASG’s contributions,” wrote Sarmad Hussain.
The session concluded with the presentation of a report highlighting UASG’s 10 years of accomplishments.
