Bhuvnesh Kumar elaborated on the significance of universal acceptance by stating that India, which is home to numerous languages, has been successful in giving domain names in 22 official languages, which is an enormous accomplishment. The nation has the highest percentage of internet users, however it should be noted that due to linguistic difficulties, it also has the highest percentage of non-users who do not speak English.
It is vitally crucial that we not simply supply internet services but also produce emails and web pages in native languages. To close the current digital divide, a multilingual internet user interface is essential.
Via Universal Acceptance, we can interact with non-internet users and promote digital inclusion across the country and the world.” Being celebrated globally on 28th March, this inaugural UA Day is being organized by UASG and ICANN and it aims to engage and mobilize top technical and language communities, companies, governments and DNS industry stakeholders to better understand the benefits of UA and how they can make their systems UA-ready. It is reported that more than 50 countries are participating in celebrating 1st Global UA day.
What does “universal acceptance” mean?
A technical criterion known as “Universal Acceptance of Internet” (often abbreviated “UA”) assures that all legitimate Domain Names and Email Addresses can be utilized by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. Only six top-level domains (TLDs) were accessible back in 1985:.com,.org,.net,.edu,.gov, and.mil.
The DNS (Domain Name System) has evolved in recent years due to the adoption of TLDs with non-Latin characters as well as the introduction of longer generic TLDs. Due to this trend, many software programmes still use outmoded domain name and email address validation checks.
First Global Universal Acceptance Day
The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), a nonprofit organization, is celebrating the first Global Universal Acceptance Day on this occasion in order to promote cooperative efforts for an inclusive and multilingual internet. The event is a first-of-its-kind effort to initiate thought-provoking, meaningful and result-oriented dialogues to raise awareness, break the language barriers and make the internet accessible to a larger population and bring every citizen in the ambit of economic progress.
The event intends to engage and organize leading technical and language communities, enterprises, governments and DNS industry stakeholders to better understand the benefits of UA and how they can make their systems UA-ready. It is reported that more than 50 countries are participating in celebrating 1st Global UA day.
The event will witness engaging sessions and workshops on relevant and important topics such as ‘Introduction to Universal Acceptance (UA),’ ‘Making your website Universal Acceptance ready: Way Forward’, ‘Universal Acceptance work in India’, ‘Importance of UA for multi-cultural society in India,’ and others.
The government and NIXI are making every effort to foster universal acceptance, according to UA Ambassador Harish Chowdhary. What counts is whether you are eager to help in being UA- Ready.”
UA Challenges
New domain names and email addresses are frequently not recognised by or processed correctly by many systems. In fact, 22 Indian languages were supported by the “.bharat” domain a few years ago. Today, not all online portals are primed for the opening of a user account with a related email address, which is why awareness of and support for UA is critical for a truly global, multilingual Internet.
The difficulty extends beyond simply producing content in several languages to include “accepting,” “validating,” “storing,” “processing,” and “displaying” the content on any platform, application, or device.
According to Jia-Rong Low, Vice President & MD, APAC, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), “UA will break down language barriers to help bring the next billion people online. We must cooperate to increase industry awareness and encourage Indian tech companies, in particular, to accept domain names written in different scripts. I have faith that India’s plan for a multilingual Internet will succeed and serve as a success example for the rest of the globe.
Way Ahead
In order to ensure valid domain names and email addresses, regardless of script, language, or character length, a technical environment must be created that enables computing devices, operating systems, browsers, social media, and e-commerce to accept instructions in local languages other than English.
The multilingual internet and universal acceptance are concepts where all domain names and all email addresses must be accepted, according to Dr. Ajay Data, Chairman of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), ICANN, and FICCI Task Force.
Non-English languages are now not accepted, however once the multilingual internet is widely accepted, users will find it easy to register domain names in other languages. There may be an effect everywhere from this. Sushanta Sinha, UA Ambassador, on the efficacy of delivering internet in different local languages, said, “Multilingual and translingual is the next future.”