The Path Toward Digitally Inclusive Internet
The Serbian National Internet Domain Registry Foundation (RNIDS) was honored to host the second keystone Universal Acceptance (UA) Day event, held in Belgrade on March 28, 2024, and organized by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and community led UASG (Universal Acceptance Steering Committee).
Coming from different countries and social and economic environments, the experts shared their experiences and identified obstacles that need to be overcome for internationalized domain names (IDNs) and new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs) to live up to their full potential.
Opening Remarks
During the opening ceremony Dejan Đukić, CEO of RNIDS emphasized the fact that Serbin domain names „speak“ almost all languages used within the country whether written in Cyrillic or Latin script.
Danko Jevtović, Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors at ICANN, singled out the importance of close and systemic cooperation between the UASG and ICANN, where the latter organization can provide a wider scope of support to the UA-related efforts that are genuinely compatible with the ICANN’s global policies of internet inclusion and expansion of the user base.
Mr. Mihailo Jovanović, Serbian Minister of Information and Telecommunication, who officially opened the UA Day 2024 stated that the linguistic and cultural diversity within the country is well illustrated by Serbian domains yet emphasized the strategic support to Internet accessibility delivered from extensive government infrastructure projects.
Panel One: Multilingual Internet as an Imperative for Digital Inclusion
Panelists:
- Sally Costerton, Interim President and CEO, ICANN
- Anil Kumar Jain, Chair, Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG)
- Leonid Todorov, General Manager, Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association
- Jaroslaw Ponder, Head of the ITU Office for Europe, ITU
- Bhanu Neupane, UNESCO
Moderator: Mikhail Anisimov, Senior Manager Global Stakeholder Engagement, ICANN
Sally Costerton raised empirically veritable concerns that people who could not speak English and write in Latin script could not enjoy the full power and potential of Internet access and access to online content.
Anil Kumar Jain saw the UA initiative as an opportunity for developing nations to bridge the digital gap, while Leonid Todorovpraised the UA progress in the always politically turbulent Asia-Pacific region, expressing concerns that the mini-states in the Pacific area might not have enough expertise and resources to implement UA.
Jaroslaw Ponder called for creating a bigger, common umbrella under which ICANN, ITU, and UASG should join forces, inviting and animating other stakeholders (especially business entities) to participate in the realization of the initiative.
Bhanu Neupane informed the audience that one of the most important tasks of UNESCO is the promotion of multilingualism and the protection of endangered languages. Advocation such an approach, endorsed by UNESCO member states, might and should become a catalyst for including the UA initiative in the plans of the global governing bodies and institutions.
The panelists emphasized that UA erases trade barriers for both established and newly founded local businesses – while big brands could get a new marketing tool for local brand communication.
Panelists agreed that Universal Acceptance is still somewhat of a hard sell yet emphasized the importance of cooperation and support needed for the countries with fewer English speakers eager to implement UA initiative.
Panel Two: Universal Acceptance in Local Communities: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities
Panelists:
- Maria Kolesnikova, Chief Analyst, Coordination Center for TLD.RU/.РФ
- Anna Karakhanyan, Board Member, AMNIC Administrator
- Anawin Pongsaboripat, Assistant Director, Thai Network Information Center Foundation
- Walter Wu, UA Ambassador and Chinese Domain Name Initiative
- Regina Fuchsova, Industry Relations Manager, EURid
- Roberto Gaetano, EURALO
Moderator: Dijana Milutinović, Communications Manager, RNIDS
Dijana Milutinović initiated the panel by sharing about RNIDS initiatives and activities, namely creation of 5 Serbian Cyrillic typefaces available for free download and singled out small businesses embracing the use of .срб domain names. She pointed out that the promotion of Cyrillic script usage online was a path to promote IDNs and UA adoption among academia, young people, entrepreneurial community but also in general.
Walter Wu said that using the local script and language has proven to solve many problems efficiently. China today leads the way – 9 of the 10 IDN gTLDs are Chinese, accounting for 86% of global IDN gTLDs. While the Chinese numbers seem huge, Mr. Wu admitted they are still at the beginning of the journey, necessitating the government, regulators and other relevant institutions to step in and make smaller stakeholders accelerate the implementation of UA in that country.
Anna Karakhanyan, Maria Kolesnikova, and Regina Fuchsova talked about the specifics in Armenia, Russia, and the European Union, respectively.
Ms. Kolesnikova explained that there were some 770,000 .РФ Cyrillic domains names registered, with an annual registration growth rate of 13.7%. The domains in Cyrillic script are widely used in Russia and businesses promote them offline as well on billboards, in TVCs, for vehicles branding. The Russian registry provided an extensive knowledge base whose cornerstone is Поддерживаю.РФ- an online project for the Russian tech community educating on UA implementation.
Ms. Fuchsova singled out a few specifics of Internet governance in the EU. Not only does the EU have many official languages, but it also has Bulgarian and Greek with non-Latin alphabets, and those are represented in domains administrated by EUrid respectively. Furthermore the fact that Latin alphabet used within EU borders have some special characters presents another task that needed to be addressed through domain names.
Anna Karakhanyan displayed the practice of cooperation with academia in UA promotion and adaptation and gave an outlook of Armanian market, while Anawin Pongsaboripat explained the situation with UA in Thailand, actions taken and spoke of cooperation with governmental sector on UA implementation.
Roberto Gaetano representing ICANN-s At-Large community advocated the bottom-up approach, and an importance of the pressure for Universal Acceptance implementation that should come from individual users and demand they generate to providers for supporting local languages and scripts.
Panel Three: Showcasing Universal Acceptance Implementation
Panelists:
- Nabil Benamar, Vice Chair, UASG Measurement Working Group
- Vadim Mikhailov, Infrastructure consultant, Coordination Center for TLD.RU/.РФ
- Anawin Pongsaboripat, Assistant Director, Thai Network Information Center Foundation
- Walter Wu, UA Ambassador and Chinese Domain Name Initiative
- Arnt Gulbrandsen, UA Technology Senior Manager, ICANN
Moderator: Dušan Stojičević, Vice President of RNIDS Board of Governors
During this tech panel audience gathered had an opportunity to learn how different countries have implemented the UA concept in their respective jurisdictions, what tools and resources for implementing and measuring UA are available, and what are the best practices discovered so far.
The most elaborate example was that of Mr. Nabil Benamar from Morocco, who shared his experience in the domain of the Arabic script. Arabic script is written from right to left and has an extensive user base, spreading through many meridians. The countries that use the Arabic language have shown a tremendous level of coherence when it comes to the UA. This is even more important if we remember that Arabic has many dialects, but it is consistent and mutually intelligible in its written form.
Vadim Mikhailov and Arnt Gulbrandsen gave an elaborate overview of what was bugging the UA global project. At a certain point, they highlighted the key problem – a relatively low UA-related knowledge base among professionals, which served as an excellent introduction to the final panel. Experiences in technical implementation regard where shared by Walter Wu and Anawin Pongsaboripat who contributed with valuable insight from Chinese and Thai markets.
Panel Four: Integrating UA into Technical Curriculum in Universities
Panelists:
- Sarmad Hussain, Senior Director IDN and UA Programs, ICANN
- Nodumo Dhlamini, Association of African Universities (AAU) Ghana
- Aleksandra Smiljanić, Professor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade
Moderator: Nabil Benamar, Professor of Computer Sciences at Moulay Ismail University of Meknes, Morocco; Vice Chair, UASG Measurement Working Group
The panel introduced a line-up of panelists who discussed whether the UA principles should be included in the curricula of technical colleges and universities and, if yes – should the courses be mandatory or elective.
There were different opinions from the university professors. Universal Acceptance itself might be a small part of any curriculum, but its importance stretches across many segments of academic education in many fields, mostly technical ones.
The general conclusion was that the key answer to this challenge was almost all about the attitude and awareness of the students. UA-related knowledge should be recognized as a valuable asset that could lead the finished students to find jobs more easily.
Technical Workshop: Universal Acceptance Implementation
Held by: Arnt Gulbrandsen, UA Technology Senior Manager, ICANN
Those who develop, provide, or administrate websites and online applications play an important role in UA adoption. This technical training session, aimed at software developers and system administrators, covered how to program, and configure technical tools e.g., websites, software applications, and email servers, for supporting Universal Acceptance of domain names and email addresses.
Conclusion
The Second Universal Acceptance Day cornerstone event was a success as it showcased relevant technical, social, economic, and legal/regulatory perspectives giving the global audience insights into the current ‘state of business’. Although there is still much that needs to be done to make all internet enabled applications, software and services to become UA ready, one of the key benefits of the event has been dismantling a myth that the Universal Acceptance is something abstract, and once again the overall important of UA for development globally was emphasized. It showed that UA is an enabler for billions to access and use all benefits of Internet regardless of the language they speak or script they use.
