ICANN65 Session Notes: ALAC Universal Acceptance Kickoff

Name of Session: ALAC Universal Acceptance Kickoff

Date: Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Attended By: Ore Lesi

Background:

Universal Acceptance (UA) is the concept of removing all technical barriers that might hinder a user from accessing any name in any TLD from any web browser, email client, or other Internet application on any computer or electronic device.

Universal Acceptance is a foundational requirement for a truly multilingual Internet, one in which users around the world can navigate entirely in local languages. It is also the key to unlocking the potential of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to foster competition, consumer choice and innovation in the domain name industry.

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/universal-acceptance-faqs-2014-09-26-en

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/universal-acceptance-2012-02-25-en

Key Points:

Members of the Universal Acceptance working group were invited to give an overview of the work being done and how to get involved.

Many users experience “bugs” when trying to use certain TLDs in their browsers, email clients and other applications.

Some websites and web applications will not permit access to email addresses with non-Latin based TLDs or domains that are longer than 3 characters.

There was a suggestion that ALSes publicise the issue of UA via blog posts and similar efforts so that companies recognise that restrictions to traditional TLDs reduces online participation of many global end-users.

An engineer shared a perspective that developing websites and applications to accept wider range of TLDs takes extra time and effort and there isn’t always a business case for doing this.

Open-source might be a solution?

NPOC Operational Issues Identified (if any):

The Internet is now critical to the way we live our lives and everyone should be able to freely use it without any technical barrier being in the way.

This is an important issue to many NPOC members, many of whom might use domain names or non-Latin based script.

Conclusion:

Follow the conversations on the mailing list: https://uasg.tech/subscribe

Ask a Question:

To submit questions or contribute additional material that may be helpful in overcoming these barriers, please send an email to GlobalSupport@icann.org with “Universal Acceptance” in the subject line.

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