On September 14, during the pre-conference day of TLDCON 2025, the Universal Acceptance Regional Coordination Group of the CIS and Eastern Europe held its traditional in-person meeting. This year, the session was conducted jointly with the Russian Universal Acceptance Working Group. Attendees included members of both working groups, such as representatives from the registries of top-level IDN domains (both country-code and generic) in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia (.РФ, .ДЕТИ, .SU), as well as invited industry experts.
Participants discussed recent developments in ICANN’s Universal Acceptance initiatives, new approaches by the international community to ensure support for new Latin top-level domains, internationalized domain names, and email addresses in internet-oriented software. They also reviewed the practices of local UA initiatives, including those led by the Regional Coordination Group, such as awareness campaigns in interested countries, testing popular applications and services, evaluating major corporate and organizational websites, and promoting the use of email addresses with national – non-Latin – characters.
Additionally, members of the working groups and invited experts presented proposals for broader support of multilingual internet identifiers in the digital environment – for example, the use of non-Latin scripts in messenger usernames.
The meeting concluded with a review of potential refinements to the Regional Coordination Group’s work plan, incorporating new ideas and suggestions.
“TLDCON brings together experts from various fields and countries who are well-versed in domain-related issues and Universal Acceptance challenges, making it an ideal venue for our annual in-person meeting. Members of the Russian and Regional Working groups not only shared updates on UA implementation efforts in their respective countries – including challenges faced and solutions developed – but also explored new approaches, future prospects, and opportunities for regional adoption,” emphasized Maria Kolesnikova, Chair of the Regional Coordination Group on Universal Acceptance in the CIS and Eastern Europe.
