The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this session on the Role of the Community to Achieve Universal Acceptance. My name is Raymond Mamattah. I am from Ghana. And I am the Vice Chair for the Communication Working Group of the UASG. This session has been organized by the universal acceptance steering group, which is a body within ICANN and it's been run by volunteers across the world. We have adequate support from ICANN. This session, we will be having moderators, panelists joining us from across the world and we'll be having some also joining us on Zoom, since not all of us are here. Those in Zoom, if you would like to ask a question, our online moderator will be monitoring the Zoom and please, raise your hand and we will give you access to ask any question that you want to do.
To give equal access to those here in the room and on Zoom, we implore everybody to join through the Zoom so that we can all have a good flow of session.
Our sessions will be in two forms. First part with a set of questions followed by the second part, and we will have room for the attendants to also ask questions at the end of the session. On behalf of the UASG steering group, I encourage you to participate fully, relax, and enjoy the session. Thank you.
To give background information to those who are participating, I will ask them to introduce themselves, starting with Ajay, who is joining us from online. Ajay, over to you.
>> AASTHA light: Hello. Thank you very much for bringing universal acceptance to everyone. As the Chair of Universal Acceptance and supported by my colleagues, all of you here, this will be a fantastic opportunity to talk about universal acceptance and impact we have during the course of the session.
First, we are moving with different discussions, different questions, and I hope engagement will be involved. We are also going to discuss a little bit about Universal Acceptance Day, and that is going to be celebrated next year, which is going to be an annual event, which we plan to host every year to raise awareness globally. Likelihood that this is going to be one of the largest multi‑stakeholder events in the world, and the UA is going to be known to the whole world, because we need to all work together to solve this problem.
This is absolutely important to raise awareness to ensure that all the domain names (?) are accepted equally. Thank you, Raymond, and we will discuss in the course of action further.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you. Next person, Hadia. Please introduce yourself.
>> HADIA ELMINIAWI: Hello, all. My name is Hadia Elminiawi. I'm an engineer by training and I work as Chief Expert on International Policies at the National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt. I shall be speaking about the role of the African community, academia, governments, and policymakers to achieve universal acceptance and internationalize, for internationalized email addresses and domain names. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you, Hadia. Anil.
>> ANIL KUMAR JAIN: Thank you. My name is Anil Kumar Jain. I am in India by profession and after that I have gone for the management, with approximately 42 years of experience. I am right now working as Chief Executive Officer and Director of National Internet Exchange of India, which is the organization which provides the basic infrastructure of Internet delivery to the common people.
I am the Chair of Working Group of the Comm Group of UASG, which is organizing this particular session. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you.
>> DESSALEGN MEQUANINT YEHUALA: Thank you. My name is Dessalegn, I work for Addis Abab University. I am a scientist in terms of I have a blend of experience in research and as a practitioner, I have been working for the industry for so many years. And on this specific session, I will be speaking about the role of academia in advancing the universal acceptance readiness cause. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you. Maria.
>> MARIA KOLESNIKOVA: Hello to everyone. My name is Maria Kolesnikova. I am a Chief Analyst at the Russian Registry. (?) is one of the first domain names as IDN domain names which were delegated in the world, and now we are one ‑‑ our domain name is the biggest really in domain name so far. And this is the main reason why our registry is working on universal acceptance.
Also, I am a Chair of Universal Acceptance local initiative which works in the Commonwealth of independent states and Eastern Europe region. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you, Maria. Satish?
>> SATISH BABU: Thanks, Raymond. I am Satish Babu. I come from India. I am Chair of the USDEC Working Group. And for this session, I am the Rapporteur and online moderator.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you. So, we move on with a brief background on what UA is all about, so we continue with the slide, Satish. So, this is the flow of the session which I've already mentioned. So, we move to the next slide. So, what actually is universal acceptance? Universal acceptance is really about domain names and email addresses being accessed in the software applications in characters that are not only in English. So, if, for instance, you are like me from Ghana, you should be able to access your emails and your domain names in your local language. That is one of it.
So, as we see on the slide, the first one is the internationalized domain names. Once the domain name is not in English, it is regarded as an internationalized domain name. Then the emails ‑‑ we should also be able to access emails in the non‑English characters as well as the domain names should be very long as compared to what we used to have. In the past, we used to have the dotcom, but now we are having a lot of domain names which are very long in nature. So, this is what UA is all about.
So, in short, being able to access domain names in non‑English characters, as well as the long domain names and the non‑English characters for emails. So, that is what UA's all about.
And this will help to promote consumers' choice, improve competition, and provide broader access to end users. Next slide.
When you speak to somebody in their local language, they are able to flow with you more and understand you better. And who said that? That is said by Nelson Mandela. And UA is key to the avenue to accessing the Internet in their local languages. And the next slide, we'll be giving the opportunity to Ajay, the head of the UASG team to give us a special announcement on UA Day. Ajay, over to you.
>> AJAY DATA: Thank you, Raymond. This is fantastic context‑setting for Universal Acceptance. UA Day means Universal Acceptance Day. When we coined this idea to discuss about a global community to come together and talk about Universal Acceptance, that would be the moment where everybody tries to solve this problem and understand this problem very well. So, we are going to discuss this out, and I am glad to share that everybody whom we talked loved the idea to celebrate this day, and participating in the discussion, participating in the events, and doing the self‑motivated events in their own regions about Universal Acceptance to talk with the government, academia, business, and community at large.
We are going to announce the date soon for UA Day. Watch out for that. And you could also participate and talk about Universal Acceptance in your own region, and there is going to be a page available on UASG.tech website, where you can go and visit and you can put your proposal, and we will support you with the content and representations to talk in your own continent, in your own region. That is going to be a mega event, and you could become part of the largest multi‑stakeholder event. Thank you, Raymond, for this opportunity.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you very much, Ajay. As I mentioned already, we have the panelists, and as they introduce themselves from across the world, and we'll be starting with the discussions now.
So, the first question goes to Ajay. So, Ajay should still be on the line. What role can the business community and the government play in achieving the universal acceptance? So at this section, we are looking at the various stakeholders and the various roles that they complete for us to achieve Universal Acceptance. So, Ajay, please tell us the role of the business community and the government in achieving UA.
>> AJAY DATA: It's a very important community stakeholder, among many other stakeholder. And why business and government? Because government makes policies to break the barrier and also mandate how the businesses should be governed, how the process of information, how the knowledge should share, how the transactions should happen, how the policies could reach out to the intended recipients. That is the role of the government and the policymakers. And businesses are supposed to execute those policies and ensure the barriers are broken.
So, let us take an example. The government of Ragastan in India provides that we will provide a Hindi email to every region of the state. There is around 70 million citizens we are talking about that are impacted. What it means? It means that the state has a primary language as Hindi. That's their official language. Hindi is a script language, and almost everybody who lives there speaks, and most people can read and write. And this is what is the language importance is. And the largest newspapers, largest content, largest generals all speak in Hindi, which means that Hindi is a primary language. Government has broken that barrier, that now citizens could have an identity by an email address in Hindi, which means now citizens have an email address and people can communicate.
Imagine those people who do not know English, how would they communicate with the government? How do they interject for policies? How do they submit their context to the intended recipient? So, suddenly, the thrust on that identity has gone up, and there are certain things which the government has embedded.
Because of the government policy, businesses came forward that, okay, now we are going to build this technology because government demanded it. And private and company came together and went ahead to build those technologies and provide those technologies to the government. That is how the innovation also takes place; that is how the business opportunities which can generate revenue takes place, and these both together makes an impact for bringing the next billion people online.
So, in a nutshell, if I can say, government is required to enable the policies, enable the businesses, enable the procurement plans, what government do, which are Universal Acceptance soft wears, and the business community is supposed to address and answer policy questions so that government receives those softwares, receives their solutions, receives that innovation in the world, in the market, which are Universal Acceptance‑ready so that people who do not want to limit themselves to communicate in English and would like to prefer to communicate in their own language gets their desired solutions and they can be empowered as good as we all are who can speak English. Hope it answers your question, Raymond. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you very much, Ajay. So, according to Ajay, the government makes the policies and the business execute it. Anil, what can you add to the role that the government plays in UA?
>> ANIL KUMAR JAIN: Thank you, Raymond. I go with the original statement which is required for all human beings. When we want to communicate from heart to heart, then the language which we use is a mother language, the language which our mother has taught us. Think about when you are approaching to a doctor. You don't talk through a borrowed language, but your own language. Similarly, Internet, which has become a part and parcel of our life, whether it is a personal life or it is a business life. I think it is important that there should be an Internet which is delivered in your own mother language. So, what we are looking at, in the morning, we were attending a Leadership Panel, where it was told that only 20% of the world population is able to really use utility of Internet in reality. In India, this figure is 88. It means 88% of the population is deprived of the true Internet.
So, what is happening is the world is divided. Among those people who understand English and those who do not understand English. Although we are saying that 5 billion people are English ‑‑ Internet users, but how many are actually using Internet? That is a big question.
In India, we speak more than 2,000 languages, and this is a very interesting aspect, because world over, we have around 10,000 languages. Out of these 2,000, 22 languages are the official languages which the government of India has approved.
The process of Universal Acceptance, that is getting idea started somewhere in 2007, and in 2017, we are able to get all 22 IDN in all official 22 languages.
Now, what action we have taken to convert this in Universal Acceptance is that more than 16,000 users are using IDN, including the local email in local languages. Government is providing a free IDN along with an IDN CCTA, which is being provided. Government has started not only policy, but we are converting those policies into action.
There is a group called Multilingual Internet Group, which has been formed. And the Multilingual Internet Group is a multi‑stakeholder where we have people from government, from industry, from academia, from technical, and from the Civil Society. The Universal Acceptance Report of the government has already come out. It is accepted by the government and all stakeholders, and it has now started taking action on this. And what we actually want ‑‑ what is government? Government is the organization which could produce the biggest portion of GDP, which influence any Internet in local languages delivered to the people. So, what we have decided is that we start with providing the IDNs. We start providing converting their websites into local languages, providing the email in their own languages and doing it. And we hope that 100% of the government websites will be UA‑ready within the next 18 months. And that is how the whole flow will happen.
In the future, what we see is that integrated efforts are required. What are integrated efforts? The UA Multilingual Internet, and the contents, all the three are required to deliver Internet in local languages effectively. So, basically, government is working, integrating the efforts of all of us ‑‑ that is, the efforts of government, efforts of technical team, efforts of organizations like ICANN, efforts of IGF, and definitely the UAG. And I hope that what IDN has talked about, UA Day, will bring the information and bring all the people together to think about, make the policies, take decisions and convert all these things into action. So, this is what I personally feel is what the role of government is effectively. Thank you, Raymond.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you, Anil. And it is worth to note that in India, in the next 18 months, all the government entities will be UA‑ready. That is really worth commending on. And just as Nelson Mandela said, Anil has also reminded us once more that if we want to get to the heart of somebody, you speak to the people in their local language. Thank you, Anil.
Hadia, we know that academia plays a very important role in UA. What are some of these roles you can mention to us?
>> HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you. This is Hadia, for the record. So, built‑in capabilities and embracing change and transformation must address both technology and humans. For that, developing skills and raising awareness of the public about UA is important. Developing educational material that addresses domain names and email addresses, address internationalize is crucial. In that context, I would mention that the Universal Acceptance Steering Group has educational material focusing on internationalized domain names and email address internationalization. The aim of this education material is to provide material related to domain names and email systems that could serve the needs of various academic programs with a purpose of integrating such material into IT‑related curricula. Technical trainers, IT program trainers and lecturers, university college students. This material could be used by many entities, including electrical and computer engineering, computer science, computer network, software engineering, information systems, mathematical engineering, information communication technologies, and others, even at schools.
And the material mainly covers all stages of Universal Acceptance readiness, including accepting validating, process, storing and displaying for all email address. The curricula covers sending, creating and sending international email addresses. So, this is an initiative of the UA Entity Group, which is also supported by ICANN.
But locally, also, this could be done. So, developing and tailoring ‑‑ we could locally use, definitely, this material. It is developed for us. But also, developing our own could be of benefit. Embracing this material and putting it out there in relevant IT programs, whether in universities or even in schools, would make sense. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you, Hadia. And Dessalegn, you are also in academia. What other thing can you add to what Hadia has said as the role of the academia in achieving UA?
>> DESSALEGN MEQUANINT YEHUALA: Thank you, Raymond. Since the reason why (audio difficulty) data, just start mentioning the specific roles that academia can play to advance the Universal Acceptance cause. (Zoom video frozen).
>> DESSALEGN MEQUANINT YEHUALA: Still many, many language are not part of that in space. So, in this regard, the academia can play a key role in terms of forming a generation panel and working or developing groups for a particular script of a script. Then, I say it's a prerequisite step for Universal Acceptance. We can't talk about Universal Acceptance without scripts added in the add‑in space. Once scripts are in the add‑in space, then there are, I would say, a spectrum of possibilities for academia to be engaged in the Universal Acceptance cause.
In the ICANN community, there is what we call Universal Acceptance Steering Group, which is composed of several working groups made up of communities, volunteers worldwide. To mention a few of them, there is a Working Group named Universal Technology Working Group, which is in charge of the Platter of tools available in the (?) space and there is also Universal Measurement Working Group, which is tasked on identifying gaps in terms of Universal Acceptance readiness across platforms. Once this identification of gaps has been made, the Universal Acceptance Technology Working Group will be conducting the remediation process of tools, of priority importance.
There are also what we call as a Working Group internationalization Working Group. There are email softwares, image and client application softwares which requires remediation, meaning support for scripts beyond LATAM. Those softwares gaps are identified by the International Email Address Working Group ‑‑ Email Address Internationalization Working Group ‑‑ and then conduct the necessary remediation process.
Beyond this, there are also other possibilities where academia can be engaged to advance the Universal Acceptance cause, like UA local initiatives. The academia can certainly proposal tailored to their local script language or tailored to the entire script as added in the add‑in space, and then they can contribute in promoting the Universal Acceptance, so across software platforms and mediums.
Then, the other task that academia can shoulder, in terms of contributing in the Universal Acceptance causes, tailored their curriculum towards Universal Acceptance so that they can produce students with Universal Acceptance orientation. So, these are some of the venues where academia can be engaged to contribute in the Universal Acceptance Steering Group.
So, I will say a few things to conclude my speech. It's important to recognize that we know that Universal Acceptance has obvious economic benefits, but beyond that, academia can also, you know, think of shouldering their social responsibilities. The Universal Acceptance is the one critical element which is missing in the localization of the Internet in its truest sense. I mean, localization has been ‑‑ I mean, many companies have been working on localization for many years, but still, users who want to navigate the Internet, still they are forced or required to use scripters for putting the uniform local resources, URL, in the address space of browsers. Again, users who are unable to be conversant with other languages, apart from Latin, they are not having appropriate use of the Internet because of linguistic barriers. So, these things really outweighs ‑‑ I mean, the cause of Universal Acceptance is not only economic, it has also social responsibilities which academia can also fulfill to an extent. Thank you. That's all.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you, Dealegn. As we said, they must include UA activities, especially for engineering causes. Thank you very much. We now go to Maria to tell us the role the technical community plays in achieving UA, especially IDN and CCT areas. Maria, over to you.
>> MARIA KOLESNIKOVA: Okay, hello once again. So, actually, I will be talking in the role as the registry, and of course as a register operator, we are part of the domain name industry, and of course, the local technical community. So, you know that as a registry, we provide internationalized domain names registration services for local customers in Russia, and there are about 700,000 registered domain names so far. So, we see quite strong demand for these domain names.
And of course, this was the reason why our registry feels a responsibility to provide these services as high quality and 100% workable ones. So we have started to work on Universal Acceptance in our region. And first of all, we have started from our self. And as a registry operator, we made our websites not only corporate one, but all websites of our projects, to become UA‑ready and also our ticket system's now available to receive complaints from internationalized email addresses, and we can provide answers to these requests. We are IE addresses as well.
And we are now, of course, planning to implement support for internationalized email addresses in our shared registration system, so domain name holders and registrars can use them as contact ones. Because regarding the IDNs, IDN domain names themselves, we, of course, support them very well and actively use for our local projects. And we are really happy to see that, recently, ICANN organization and Association of Registries in Asia‑Pacific Region, has also had universal acceptance and developed guidelines for registries like ours so you can find more information and our colleagues from other registries can investigate what they should do in their software ecosystems to become UA‑ready.
But working on Universal Acceptance, as humans, we understand that we can't achieve it only by ourselves. So, that was the reason why we have started to actively communicate with other local developer community, and now we launched the special project (non‑English language) Which has on its website adopted information in the Russian language, because this is the local language for us, for administration and administrators and service providers. So, we have the recommendations, standards, and manuals for technicians, how can set up a UA‑ready systems.
Of course, we provide some trainings and webinars and even Hackathons to engage local technical community in these processes and show that Universal Acceptance can be achieved in practice, and it's not really difficult in some cases.
And of course, we explain to them, the domain name space has been changed, and now this is the fact that can't be ignored anymore, because IDN domain names won't disappear, and we see that new IDN domain names continue to be delegated by ICANN, and it means that developers should make all their systems competitive and sustainable for the future Internet.
And thirdly, what we are doing in our role as the registrar operator, we, of course, make regular awareness campaigns for those who can better influence technical local community. This is businesses, government, and of course, end users. So, for end users, we explain how they can register and use IDN domain names and internationalized emails today, where they can do it, how they can enrich their user experience, and what is the main, how they can complain to the software manufacturer if its software is not UR‑ready yet. So users can show their demand even if they will complain and demand the readiness of a software.
And for businesses and governments, so, they can consider their approach that Universal Acceptance is one of the solutions for digital inclusion issues, and it can help to open the door of Internet for inviting more users and overcome the language barriers so no one is left behind. And to make Internet and online services really universal and sustainable. So, for this influences, it should be clear that Universal Acceptance could enrich also innovation and technological development, especially in terms of development of multilingual Internet. So, I mean the services for multilingual users and multilingual platforms for translations and so on and so on. I think this is just Universal Acceptance is a small part of all these innovations. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you very much, Maria. Now we come to Satish. As the Chair of one of the working groups, what role do you think the technical community plays in achieving UA?
>> SATISH BABU: Thanks, Raymond. This is Satish, for the record. So, I just read that the population of human beings on the Earth has just crossed 8 billion, and we are also aware that the number of Internet users is approximately 4 billion. So, we have a lot of ground to cover, and the universality of Universal Acceptance cannot be questioned at all.
Now, the acceptance part of it is somewhat more technical, and it involves a bunch of organizations and communities that produce software. Now, the challenge that we face is that, how do we persuade them to ensure that they make their software and their libraries and their operating platforms and systems all compatible with the objective of universal acceptance? This is not a trivial task, and the UA community within ICANN and the UA Tech Working Group and the EAU Working Group have been working quite hard to try to enable more companies and open‑source communities that produce these software to start supporting the Universal Acceptance.
Now, the question is, what would incentivize them to do this? So, in the latter half of the presentation, I will also talk about the role of the language communities. It is not just merely technical. The technical part is, okay, somebody has to decide that it should be done; somebody has to do the coding; somebody has to do the testing; and somebody has to kind of do these things and ensure the proper date. And the Tech Working Group has already started efforts at producing sample code fragments for working, you know, code that people can directly use.
So, in summary, I would say that the technical challenges are actually quite non‑trivial, and we need a concerted effort, not just the technical people, but also the language communities, governments, and businesses, to ensure that the support for Universal Acceptance happens. Thank you, Raymond.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you very much, Satish. To remind the participants, please, you can start posting your questions in the Zoom room, and at the end of this session, we'll be taking note. And also, you can also go to our website, uasg.tech, to read more on UA and how you can engage. To also check if your email is compliant, please go to uasg.tech forward slash eai‑check, and see if your email is UA‑compliant.
We also want to acknowledge the presence of two of our board members, ICANN board members, Maarten and Arnt. Thank you for joining us. So, we have only ten minutes more for the second part of the question so that we can give room to the participants to also engage with us.
So, I'll start with Hedda. How can we make UA adoption grow in a sustainable way? At this point, we are looking at how UA can be compliant with the Sustainable Development Goals. So, we start with Hadia.
>> HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you. This is Hadia, for the record. So, the UN Sustainable Development Goals identify issues that are universal in the sense that they affect all and are of relevance to all countries. Similarly, Universal Acceptance of domain names is a target or goal that is relevant to all countries. It is a goal that is global in its nature and importance and universally applicable to all. It is a goal that possesses the feature of universality of application, which means it can be achieved through common approach.
Universal Acceptance is a global approach that allows differentiation and preserving one's identity. As eCommerce is rapidly picking up across Africa and as Sub‑Saharan Africa continues to have the fastest growing mobile economy, and for free trade across Africa to fully benefit from digital transformation, coordinated efforts and policies to ensure that systems work with the common infrastructure of the Internet is important for both the sustainability of newly offered services and applications and for digital transformation, but it is also important for the establishment of universal acceptance development. So, digital transformation embraces change and improvement and continual learning. And those are all elements required for Universal Acceptance adoption and accelerating this adoption.
I would say also that for Universal Acceptance to happen, it needs to be both cost‑effective and sustainable. For sustainability, we have mentioned before also education, and I continue to say that education is crucial, including universal acceptance in IT‑related academic program could be one of the ways forward that guarantees sustainability. And when we talk about being cost‑effective, including universal acceptance adoption with system updates and digital transformation programs currently taking place makes it an economically feasible update, especially that governments are currently rapidly adopting digital transformation and embarking and promoting new digital assets. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you very much, Hadia. So, same question goes to Anil.
>> ANIL KUMAR JAIN: Thank you, Raymond. Taking next to what Hadia has said, let me start with the same thing, that to make UA more sustainable for years to come, an integrated approach is required where the UA, the multilingual Internet, the contents, everything has to work in resonance with each other.
Starting with the government, it is required, and I think it is very essential that we should make citizen‑oriented services, UA‑oriented first. It means the services which are impacting the citizens on a daily basis, that will make the whole process very fast.
The next thing I personally feel is that all players, like technical community, government, business, academia, social media, should agree and should get convinced that UA is a business model. There is a study which was conducted in 2018 by ICANN where it is said that UA adoption can bring a business, which is as good as $9 billion to $10 billion to all the stakeholders together. And once they are committed themselves, I think they will start using both the universities of UASG with help of ICANN has done over several years. You can access the various work that is done by UAG on the website which is mentioned initially.
Then, I think another important point which Hadia has also said is the capacity‑building. When you make the whole ecosystem UA‑ready, then all the players should understand how to use those systems effectively. This is starting from the school education/college education, but at the same time, the citizens, the government officers, the industries. Everybody should get the training and should be ready for using this.
To make it sustainable, I personally feel that all of us must join the UA indicators and measure them on a regular basis. And once we find that there is something that is required, then we should take the course correction during that time and make it sustainable.
And finally, I think the key to this involves community. Community means at every level. Involve shopkeepers. Involve doctors. Involve charter (?). Involve the women. Involve everybody in the whole process of UA adoption. And once it is done, then nobody can stop the flow of UA, and ultimately delivering the multilingual Internet to the people of this globe. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you, Anil. Now this question goes to Maria, Ajay, and Satish. As Universal Acceptance requires a broad contribution, what mechanisms are needed to increase UA acceptance, taking into consideration our global UAday that we'll be celebrating?
>> MARIA KOLESNIKOVA: Should I start? Thank you. So, I will continue my thoughts. So, I think that, first of all, there should be UA awareness, because everyone, like end users, business, governments, and others, should be aware of availability to use all domain names and email addresses, despite of their length and script language use. So, it means that they are already on the Internet and new ones continue to appear. So, anyone can register IDN or digital domain name right now, today. So, the same should be for internationalized email addresses as well.
And it's really important to provide such global events like IGF and others to include Universal Acceptance thematic when we are discussing Internet future and its further development.
From the technical perspective, I would say that we need to reach some critical mass of support in universal acceptance, systems, services, and applications, so as these systems and international emails really became available on the Internet and work properly on the network, global network. And for that, of course we need to continue to work with technical community and URD, as was mentioned. It can be one of great initiative to raise awareness, to train technical community how to work with UA issues.
The same can be done through Hackathons like webinars or local or regional trainings for local technical communities or regional technical communities, or even global ones. And because, they should be well informed and trained and have UR skills in their baggage, professional baggage so far, to be ready to manufacture really good and competitive software. And those bodies who can task developers should request UR support. I mean, governments, businesses, those bodies who can train developers should include materials of universal acceptance. Universities, courses and so on and so on. And those bodies who make standards should be followed ‑‑ that should be followed by developers ‑‑ they also should include regulation on Universal Acceptance issues and aspects. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you, Maria. Ajay, just one minute. And Satish, also you have one minute.
>> AJAY DATA: I think this is ‑‑ to me, this is an idea which can make the entire global community talk about universal acceptance and see the benefit in it. Universal Acceptance is not just for you and me and the speakers who are speaking here and certain other people. This is for everyone. This is like bringing ‑‑ breaking the barriers so that more and more people can engage, can benefit from the Internet by having all of the acceptance of domain names and email addresses. UA Day, when I started thinking with Universal Acceptance to promote to the world, UA Day was an idea to engage almost everyone throughout the world. And hopefully, the way it is progressing, we will have been able to meet everyone and everyone now can participate and engage and be part of the UA Day that will happen next year. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you. Satish.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you, Raymond. Before I start, I must say there are two questions in the chat, so we can take them after this round is over.
So, just like we celebrate IGF, the UA Day is also an occasion for us to celebrate Universal Acceptance. When I say "celebrate," basically what I mean is that, you know, we discuss, we debate, we work on it. And just like the way IGF brings together various parties to one place so that we can deliberate on several of these issues in an open, free manner, UA Day also provides a similar occasion, once a year, for different stakeholders to come together and create some synergy, just the way IGF is doing it. Thanks, Raymond. Back to you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you very much. And the last question goes to Dessalegn.
To achieve UA, it comes with a lot of requirements, such as capacity‑building and the rest. What are some of these trainings that can be done to ensure that UA acceptance is globally successful?
>> DESSALEGN MEQUANINT YEHUALA: Thank you. For the interest of time, I will say what I said earlier with a bit more emphasis. So, universities, they can produce graduates with universal acceptance orientation, if they tailor their curriculum throughout this Universal Acceptance. That's one area. The other is, universities ‑‑ yes, the university has plenty of resources, I think, for a starting point. There are sample courts available in the repository, so academia can use those sample course and probably they may challenge their students, for example, to produce library. Using the existing code as they are may not be confident, but they provide some hints on how to make their system ‑‑ developers ‑‑ their system UA‑ready, but academia can challenge their trainees, their students, to produce a library so that the whole developer community can use the library at ease. So, that's an initial I can say in a minute. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you very much, Dessalegn. To remind you once more, you can go to uasg.tech to know more about Universal Acceptance. And we have a lot of printed materials at the ICANN booth down there, when you are going for lunch, so please pass by there to pick up some materials for further readings. It is readily available for everyone to pick one.
Satish, let's take questions from the Zoom.
>> SATISH BABU: The first question is from Jim, an IGF 2022 Youth Ambassador. He says, "Now we are debating the UA. This is an essential approach to ensuring Internet inclusion. Also, don't you think it will also be crucial that the IGF meeting be held in multiple languages? There should be a model where people could express themselves without language barriers." End of question.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Okay. I think ‑‑
>> ANIL KUMAR JAIN: Thank you very much for the wonderful question. There is no doubt in the mind of anybody who are Internet community. We discuss at ICANN, we discuss at IGF, we discuss at the regional IGF, we discuss at APLDs and national IGF, there is a need for the adoption of Universal Acceptance, and I fully agree with you that all of us must be committed to this. Second, as we are talking about breaking the language barrier in the UA, this is essential that your requirement that all the discussions and debates hang at IGF or at ICANN or regional IGF or national IGF should be in multiple languages so that people understand. They should be able to adopt and they should be able to interact and participate in the entire deliberation.
As I have understood, the IGF discussions are in several languages ‑‑ may not be in all languages. Similarly, ICANN, which we concluded 75th ICANN, it was also in multiple languages, and people have adopted. And for that, I want to thank, really, two board directors who are with us, who are there to make it possible for communities to talk in local languages. And this is the future which is going to come. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you.
>> ANIL KUMAR JAIN: The second question is from Arvin. Thanks all for the panel. Will the new urge for digitalization help the overall UA spread? For instance, free data flow. And having in mind, one of the panelists mentioned that UA should be a societal obligation ‑‑ how to help open‑source communities to develop such tech solutions that implement UA principles? Thanks.
>> ANIL KUMAR JAIN: Or Satish or Maria? Who should take up this? Maria?
>> MARIA KOLESNIKOVA: Okay. So, my thoughts on this is that, first of all, we need, somehow, to reach these open‑source communities and to tell them that we want that they implement Universal Acceptance principles in their products. And it can be done by as developers who can reach maintainers and probably even suggest code samples to be included in open‑source products and maintainers of those products can consider them.
But, how to say, probably it also can be done if developers can start to use only those open‑source products which are UR‑ready. It means that then it will be, like in a natural way, that some open‑source products which are ready will become more popular and everyone can see that exactly these products are demanded. Probably such on this.
>> I will add 20 seconds. The tech Working Group has started this and they need help, and we do this by helping develop some sample code they can use, and we also report the lack of complaints of UA in their bug reporting system so that they are aware. So, we have started the work, and we fully believe in empowering open‑source communities to carry out this conversion. Thank you. Back to you, Raymond.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you very much. In the interests of time, we'll take only one question from the room. Does anybody have any question for us?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you for your presentations. There was a question but also a suggestion. In terms of languages and ‑‑
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Introduce yourself please.
>> AUDIENCE: Sorry. My name is (?). I'm from Ghana. And whilst all of the discussions that have happened or have been initiating in our IGF circuits about one language and bridging the gap for people to be online and also with the initiative of a USAG, I think one institution that we tend to miss in our ecosystem ‑‑ we have them in Africa ‑‑ institutes of languages. I don't know if you've thought about it, but it's a question and a suggestion. Have you engaged institutes of languages in trying to also encourage these ecosystem players to also come on board and also promote USAG? We should, in the interest of our nature as multistakeholders so that we can bring people on board. And this is just something I would like to draw you. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you very much. So, that will be the only question we will take. I will give the floor to Ajay to answer that question. But to give my part of the answer to that, we have the UASG initiatives that are bottom‑up approaches, so anybody from Ghana and other places that want to engage should involve the Institute of Languages, as our colleague has mentioned. So, Ajay, if you have something to add to that.
>> AJAY DATA: Yeah, I think, Raymond, thank you. This is very important question, and important to the distinction between what we are approving. Universal Acceptance is a very big umbrella where the goal is that all domain names and all email addresses are accepted equally and in all software applications.
We have stakeholders. Language community is one of the stakeholders and we engage with them very clearly and they are a clear target. We have local initiatives in the regions and community joined together in the region to promote UA and find ways, the way UA can be promoted and solutions can be built locally, with the help of global volunteer community and the USAG.tech. We have ambassadors who raise awareness in these programs. So, by this opportunity on this platform, I would like you to, and motivate you to create a group in your community and see if you would like to create a local initiative in a region, and there is a template available on the website and you can apply for it.
And if you are equally passionate about and aware of what UA is all about and you would like to do something in the country, in your own region, then you can apply for UN ambassadorship. But thank you for the question. And we do engage with all of the stakeholders which are to language. But our scope remains simple, to have the acceptance of domain and email addresses in all software applications. That's where we largely focus on. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you very much. Thank you, Ajay. I will take that also as your last word for us. So, I'll give Maria to give us her last word.
>> MARIA KOLESNIKOVA: I mean, about the takeaways of this session, so I just can repeat that, first of all, we need to continue to reform the domain name industry to make all registries to become UA‑ready themselves. And also we should continue to motivate the technical community to become ready to get their skills in the set, in the baggage, and work with influence on them, influences on them. And of course, I think, I am sure that we need to communicate with end users, because they can show their demand. We need to help them to enrich their user experience and at least claim that some software is not UR‑ready yet. It can also help.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: And annil ‑‑
>> ANIL KUMAR JAIN: Satish was saying we could have 30 seconds. My takeaway from the session is basically there are multiple stakeholders who have to work collectively to bring about UA, universal acceptance. So, UA Day is a good opportunity to mobilize them all together. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you.
>> HADIA ELMINIAWI: This is Hadia, for the record. So, three takeaways, quickly. Universal Acceptance is a global approach that allows differentiation and preserving one's identity. Internationalized domain names could be considered a public good, promoting digital, economic, and social inclusion.
As governments in Africa are accelerating the rollout of new generations of digital assets to support digitalization of many services, there is general agreement that apps and services need to be better to support the new digital era. And of course, education for sustainability. Thank you.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you. My takeaway is that ICANN and IGF should keep UA as the top five priorities to discuss and implement. Second, most governments should adopt UA as part of digital transformation where they involve the local community in implementing the UA for the total country, and especially delivering the citizen‑oriented services. Thank you.
>> RAYMOND SELORM MAMATTAH: Thank you. Dessalegn, 30 seconds.
>> DESSALEGN MEQUANINT YEHUALA: Okay, thank you. My takeaway from this session is it's important to recognize the current limitation of the Internet. The Internet is not a localized tool in the truest sense, the sense that still people have to use scripts, which is their local language, particularly to gain access to a particular resource on the Internet, they have to put their URL in different script. So, to make the Internet technology a truly global tool, it's important that local communities have to mobilize their service and work to develop something for their local language and make their script part of their space.
And then, afterwards, it can be said that Universal Acceptance is in that ‑‑ (no audio)