Universal Acceptance (UA) is a fundamental requirement for a truly multilingual and digitally inclusive Internet. UA ensures that all domain names, including internationalised domain names, and email addresses are treated equally and can be used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. Today this is not the case, which means many people now using the Internet, and a majority of the next billion Internet users, are unable to use their native language in their email name, when they submit forms on the Internet, when they register for services, and much more.
Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG.tech) proposing this Town Hall event is a community-based globally organized multistakeholder group conducting social and technical research to determine both the challenges in adopting UA and undertaking outreach to promote the adoption of UA practices. Through this session, UASG will bring together a variety of these stakeholders to share the roles each stakeholder must play to support UA, highlighting the benefits that accrue to language communities as a result. These stakeholders will also discuss how they should collaborate to promote UA for effective and urgently needed digital inclusion.
To be inclusive, end users must be able to use the online technology globally. Supporting the languages people speak around the world is a necessary prerequisite for providing both the ease of access to end users and choice to express themselves online. Otherwise, we leave out communities which can only communicate in their own languages, deepening already existing inequalities of access to the Internet and the societal and economic benefits such access can bring.
Domain names are the key to multilingual content online. Similarly, emailing remains one of the most important communication channels. Email addresses are now also widely used to sign up for applications and services and become a gate-pass for interacting online. The technical community has worked hard to enable both domain names and email addresses in local languages and it is now possible to have a complete experience in one’s own language.
However, there are continued challenges in universal acceptance of domain names and email addresses (UA) for standards, tools, and applications globally. These challenges are hampering the local communities from benefiting from the availability of this multilingual technology. Addressing UA requires a concerted effort by a variety of stakeholders. Governments, one of the drivers of technology adoption as well as one of the largest consumers, should play their role in demanding solutions which support UA, especially for online citizen services, e.g. Government of Rajasthan, India, has promoted use of Hindi email addresses for use with its citizen services (see case study https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/UASG013E-en-case-study-rajmail-government-of-rajasthan.pdf).
The technical community must also play its part on two levels. Analysis of a variety of programming languages (https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/documents/UASG018A-en-digital.pdf), email tools (https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/documents/UASG030-en-digital.pdf), content management systems (https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/documents/UASG032-en-digital.pdf) and networking tools (https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/documents/UASG024-en-digital.pdf) has shown that though many of these technology platforms are increasingly supporting UA, there are still significant gaps. Therefore, developers should update their platforms to support UA. Additionally, developers of end-user applications or end-user systems are too often not utilizing or configuring their products to support UA with the tools that are made available to them. A study of websites globally (https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/documents/UASG027-en-digital.pdf) shows that only about 11% can accept email addresses in local languages, such as Chinese or Arabic. Another study on email servers (https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/documents/UASG021D-en-digital.pdf) shows that less than 10% of these servers globally are configured to support such email addresses. So, those who develop and deploy end-user applications and systems must also ensure that UA support is provided to support multilingual access.
The academic community must enhance their training and coursework to instill the need for supporting UA in their students to make the internet more inclusive and teach them how to implement this multilingual computing technology. Academia needs to highlight the socio-economic implications on communities and how policy and governance can impact the UA adoption.
Finally, civil society and the business community, who provide support and services to end-user communities, should also use domain names and emails in local languages to communicate with communities and consumers, which significantly increases their local reach. Communicating in local languages also increases trust and understanding for end users, which is essential in disseminating information to address stressful situations, such as the current COVID19 pandemic. Civil society should also consider how to use their programs and advocacy to influence governments, businesses and others to be UA compliant - for example in projects for local connectivity and local content.
In summary, in a new after-COVID-19 reality much of the global population, especially those who are under-served, and most of the next billion users coming online (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-next-billion-internet-users-worldwide/), need online access and communication in their local languages, as they have less or no ability to freely communicate in a foreign language. Domain names and email addresses are gateways and are now technically possible and available in local languages. However, the tools and technologies deployed still lag in supporting this essential internationalization for broader access. The session will involve relevant stakeholders, including technology providers, business, civil society and public sector, for discussing the best way to collaborate to address universal acceptance challenges to achieve collective goals for an all-inclusive internet.
The session is being organized to discuss and determine the mechanisms for stakeholder international and regional collaboration to promote Universal Acceptance. This will be done by online and some onsite panelists sharing their initial statements from the perspective of different stakeholders to set the stage for discussion. Moderators will use these statements to elicit discussion with the participants, which will be the major portion of the session, anticipated to be between 30-40 minutes. Both onsite and online participants will be encouraged to contribute to this discussion. A short survey using online tools will also be conducted during the session to gather feedback from the participants on additional mechanisms for collaboration of stakeholders. The online and onsite moderators will be taking turns to ensure equal participation opportunities for those present and those joining online. UA is an important global project addressing issues that are at the core of Internet governance, and will bring tangible and we hope quite quick benefits to a great number of people.
