UASG Newsletter
September 2021

UASG Meeting with ALAC

In the ALAC Guest Speakers Series, Maureen Hilyard, ALAC Chair, invited Dr. Ajay Data, UASG Chair, to provide an update on the activities of the UASG.
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People of UASG

"Universal Acceptance (UA) means the #Internet should accept scripts in my local language." - Abdulkarim Ayopo Oloyede, UA Ambassador - Nigeria. What does UA mean to you?
Watch video

New UA Program Manager

Seda Akbulut has joined the ICANN IDN-UA Program team as the UA Program Manager. Seda will help manage the UA initiatives being undertaken by the community, including the activities of the UASG. She is based in ICANN’s İstanbul office. Seda has been a member of ICANN’s Global Support team for six years and was the Lead Global Support (GS) Analyst. She was responsible for the Istanbul GS team, and managed inquiries of registries, registrars, registrants, and Internet community. She also contributed to UA-related inquiries in her GS role. Before ICANN, Seda worked as a Customer Service Manager at Scania Financial Services. Seda is a Mathematical Engineer and holds an MBA degree.

THNIC EAI Case Study

Pensri Arunwatanamongkol, Executive Director of the Thai Network Information Center Foundation, explains that culture and accessibility are core to the use of Thai IDNs. Read the latest EAI case study.
EAI case study

UASG Chair’s Blog on FY21 Progress and Looking Ahead

The newly published UA-Readiness Report for FY21 shows that progress is being made but more work needs to be done to support a multilingual and inclusive Internet. The UASG chair gives an overview of the report in his blog.
New blog

FY21 UA-Readiness Report

Did you know that only 6.3% of over 2 million mail servers’ IP addresses tested can accept an internationalized email address with the domain part in ASCII? Check out the new FY21 UA-Readiness Report for a full breakdown of testing results.
Full report

ICANN72 Virtual Annual General Meeting

28 October 2021
GAC meeting with the UASG is scheduled on 28 October at 17:30-19:00 UTC. The cross-community interaction has been initiated by the UASG to share the updates on the current gaps in UA and highlight the role of governments in achieving UA readiness. To join the meeting, register to ICANN72.

IGF 2021

6-10 December 2021
The UASG is organizing the town hall session, Universal Acceptance for Wider Access through Collaboration, at IGF 2021. Town halls are interactive sessions organized by entities dealing with Internet governance-related issues of international scope. Through town hall sessions, stakeholders exchange views on topical and controversial Internet governance issues. Registration is required.

WHOIS Hackathon

25-26 September 2021
The Serbian National Internet Domain Registry Foundation (RNIDS) and Quantox Technology hosted a WHOIS Hackathon that tested participants' ability to provide working applications for domains, including IDNs. The realization of the hackathon was supported by ICANN.
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Github Pull Request Hackathon

15-09 September 2021
The GitHub Pull Request Hackathon was held by THNIC Academy. The event was organized in a virtual format and had a seven-day competition to modify a GitHub project to become UA-ready and open a pull request to notify the GitHub project owner. The total score in the competition was calculated from the number of pull requests and the number of merge pull requests, as well as their importance for the selected project to edit.
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Pre-IIGF 2021

14 September 2021
FICCI-ILIA hosted the second UA session at pre-India Internet Governance Forum (IIGF): the Changing Landscape of the Indic-Internet and Importance of Universal Acceptance (UA). Earlier on 31 August, the session Universal Acceptance and Multilingual Internet Awareness and Promotion was also held.
Recording 14 Sept
Recording 31 Aug

SEAIGF 2021

1 September 2021
The SEAIGF 2021 is an initiative coordinated by the Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Informatics and IGF Indonesia for stakeholders to get involved and contribute to building better Internet governance in the Southeast Asia region. The session Universal Acceptance of Domain Names and Email Addresses for a More Linguistically Inclusive and Diverse Internet was held on 1 September with participation from UASG members. Presentation | Recording

Universal Acceptance Webinar

30 August 2021
An Universal Acceptance webinar was organized by Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Banda Ancha para el Desarrollo and ICANN for the Latin American community.
Recording

It’s All About Domains…

New interview in the series “It's all about domains” with Dr Ajay Data, written by Simone Catania, Global Content & Communications Manager, InterNetX.
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