Thousands of people gather around the world to support a multilingual internet

Universal acceptance events held in over 40 countries/territories, with 22 languages

LOS ANGELES, July 3, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) released attendance figures for the first Universal Acceptance Day (UA) in a new report released today . According to the report, thousands of members of the global Internet community on five continents attended the milestone event. Withheld March 28, 2023 and organized by ICANN and the volunteer-led UASG, UA Day was established as a means to bring together local, regional and global stakeholders to spread awareness and encourage adoption of the AU through a mix of information sessions and virtual, in-person and hybrid trainings. UA Day marked the first time that a diverse set of technical and linguistic communities, businesses, governments, and Domain Name System (DNS) industry stakeholders mobilized to support UA and the multilingual Internet on a global scale.

UA Day by the numbers

• Total participants: 9,424

• Proposals received: 90

• Organized events: 50+

• Countries/Territories Represented: 40+

• Languages represented: 22 (Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Cantonese, Chichewa, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Burma, NepalPersian, Portuguese, Russian, Sinhala, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Turkish and Urdu)

The Keystone UA Day event was held at New Delhi, Indiahosted by of India Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) through the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), in collaboration with ICANN and UASG. Dozens of other events took place over the three months from late February to May 2023with most events occurring during or around March 28, 2023. Participants came from many stakeholder categories, including: businesses; governments, including telecommunications regulators; research institutes; civil society and non-governmental organizations, including the At-Large Structures and Internet Society (ISOC) chapters; IT companies and tech startups; telecommunications companies; the DNS industry; Internet Service Providers and Hosting Providers; and academia, including faculty and students.

The story continues

“UA Day was conceived as a way to create global awareness of the benefits of UA and encourage the adoption of UA,” said UASG Chairman Anil Kumar Jain. “The enthusiastic response from stakeholders around the world is encouraging and demonstrates that there is strong demand for a more inclusive and multilingual internet through universal acceptance.”

UA is a technical necessity that ensures that all valid domain names and email addresses, regardless of script, language or character length, can be equally used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices and systems. It is considered a fundamental requirement for the continued expansion of the Internet. Since 2009, the domain name landscape has changed dramatically in terms of the overall number of available top-level domain names (TLDs), TLD character lengths, and available scripts. However, the checks used by many software applications to validate domain names and email addresses often use rules created many years ago. Achieving UA ensures that everyone can experience the full social and economic power of the Internet using the chosen domain name and email address that best align with their interests, business, culture, language and scripture.

“UA is a strategic priority for ICANN. As the cornerstone of today’s global internet, it is critical to enabling consumer choice and bringing the next billion users online,” said the interim President and CEO of ICANN. ICANN Sally Costerton. “We are proud to support the inaugural UA Day and look forward to future awareness campaigns to help make the internet more inclusive for all users, no matter what language they speak or write.”

To learn more about UA Day, read the full summary report. For more information about UA, visit uasg.tech and follow the hashtag #Internet4All on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

About ICANN
ICANN’s mission is to help ensure a stable, secure and unified global internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address, name or number into your computer or other device. The address must be unique so that computers know where they are. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers around the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a non-profit public benefit corporation with a community of participants from around the world.

SOURCE ICANN