For any device to communicate with another on the Internet, it needs a unique identifier - a name or an Internet Protocol (IP) address. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) community develops policies that allow these identifiers to work well. Until 2010, the global Domain Name System (DNS) only allowed Top Level Domains (TLDs) which are in the Latin script. The DNS then expanded to include Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) for country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) and domain names for other TLDs. However, many language scripts and writing styles are used around the world, many of which are currently not supported by web browsers, email clients and software applications. This is where Universal Acceptance (UA) comes in.
Universal Acceptance (UA) helps to remove technical barriers for users, meaning that all TLDs should be able to work within all software and email applications regardless of the language script or number of characters. It is a foundational requirement for a truly multilingual Internet to remove linguistic barriers for accessing the Internet by allowing people to use native/indigenous languages and in turn bringing more people online.
According to the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) country readiness report (2020), the goal of UA is for these email addresses 测试1@server.technology and السعودية.رسيل@دون to have the same rate of acceptance as user@test.org. However, many organisations and businesses have not yet updated their systems to make this possible. In 2020, 9.7% of email servers were potentially configured to support email addresses in local languages and scripts. Chinese and Arabic are among the top spoken languages globally, yet only 11% of the top 1,000 websites globally support email addresses in these languages.
You are invited to contribute to this collection of toolkit, reports, papers and other resources from indivdduals, ICANN and other organisations interested in UA. We are currently collected them in this resources folder. More information about how to contribute is in this CONTRIBUTING.md file.
Other resources:
- Project Tasks
- Activities and Events
- We are planing a UA webinar series 2021 titled "Demystifying Universal Acceptance: What does a multilingual Internet look like?"
- Code of Conduct
- Project maintenance
The project is licensed under the MIT license for software/code related content and Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) for non-software/code related content. See details here.
We believe that Universal Acceptance implementation requires a multistakeholder effort. We are grateful to our partners and supporters.
Organisers
Partners and Supporters
This repository is maintained by a team of technologists, researchers, tech policy experts, activists, UA enthusists, among others, working in organisations including:
Access Plus is a Ugandan based organisation that aims at improving livelihoods by promoting inclusive access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the Internet to contribute to solving economic barriers. We do this by improving access to knowledge, information exchange and building technical capacity to use these technologies.
The team
- Sarah Kiden is a public interest technologist and researcher, working at the intersection of technology, communities and design. She is a Marie Curie Research Fellow on Open Design of Trusted Things (OpenDoTT), a joint programme between Northumbria University and Mozilla. She is currently exploring the possibilities of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for community building, and focusing on community fridges and food sharing initiatives.
- Lillian Achom believes that an ICT-empowered society is an opportunity for employment, wealth creation and therefore economic growth and better livelihoods. Lillian’s favorite is teaching women and girls in rural communities the benefits of internet & how to use smart phones and, mentoring young girls to take up careers in ICT.
- Esther Patricia Akello is a technologist, who is passionate about application development and finding solutions for socio-economic problems. She is an entrepreneur, expert in managing ICT Projects and start-ups, and one of the founding Partners of AccessPlus an organization focused on promoting STEM careers for girls and extending ICT services to underserved communities. She is an Application Developer at the Bank of Uganda and holds an MSc in Information Systems and BSc in Computer Science.
- Innocent Adriko is a Ugandan IT Scientist, with great interest in Internet Policy and Governance, which field he has diversely trained and worked in for the last two years with great focus on Digital Inclusion, Digital Literacy, Digital Rights, Safety and Security Online. He currently volunteers as the Engagement Lead at the Digital Literacy Initiative and is a member of the Internet Society (ISOC) Uganda Chapter, ICT Association of Uganda and the ICANN community. He has been a NextGen participant at ICANN65, Internet Society Youth Ambassador, and has spoken at national, regional and international conferences. Innocent has written papers that include “Internet as a Human Right; Internet Freedom” and “The Role of Government in ensuring Quality of Service”.
TL;DR
Get started with our first zine on Universal Acceptance. A4 version available to print.