Universal Acceptance : Way Forward
SANOG 41, Mumbai, India
Dr. Devesh Tyagi CEO, NIXIUniversal Acceptance“Universal Acceptance (UA) ensures that all domain names, including new top-level domains (TLDs),
Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), and email addresses are treated equally and can be used by all
Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. UA provides the gateway to the next billion Internet users”
UA is a global effort to drive a more inclusive and multilingual internet. A cornerstone oftoday's global Internet, UA offers many benefits for both individual Internet users as well as theorganisations that serve them.
Achieving UA ensures everybody can experience the full social and economic power of theInternet using their chosen domain name and email address that best aligns with their interests,business, culture, language, and script.
UA is the gateway to a more inclusive and multilingual Internet, it promotes consumer choice,improves competition, and provides broader access to end users.

Elements of Universal Acceptance• Accessibility: UA is a technical compliance process that ensures that all domainnames and email addresses can be used by all Internet-enabled applications,devices and systems.
• Interoperability: UA provides a gateway to the next billion Internet users. Itenables governments and societies to better serve their communities through theuse of an increasing number of new domains and many other scripts.

• Technical Front: On the technical front, UA means an environment throughwhich any computing device, operating system, browser, or social media/ecommerce app accepts instructions in a local language (other than English).

Building UA Readiness
Making Applications/Platforms UA-ReadyIn essence, support all valid domain names and email addresses:

AcceptValidate

ProcessStore

Display• Accept: The user can input characters from their local script into a text field.
• Validate: The software accepts the characters and recognises them as valid.
• Process: The system performs operations with the characters.

• Store: The database can store the text without breaking or corrupting.
• Display: When fetched from the database, the information is correctly shown.

Internationalised Domain Names
IDNs• In the past, top-level domains (TLDs) have mostly
been two or three letters long formed with Latincharacters a-z (e.g., .com, .org). The evolution ofthe DNS has allowed for newer and longer TLDs.
There are now over 1,200 new generic gTLDs that
represent brands, communities, and geographies• These new TLDs also include Internationalised
Domain Names (IDNs) & country code Top-Level
Domains (ccTLDs), which allow for domain names
in local languages and scripts such as “.भारत” and“‫بھارت‬.” (“bharat” written in Devanagari (Hindi)and Arabic (Urdu))

Email Address Internationalisation

EAI• Initially, email addresses were also notavailable in local languages and scripts. EmailAddress Internationalization (EAI) addresses
this limitation and allows for having email
addresses in local languages and scripts.
• Consider the example of संपर्क@रजिस्ट्री.भारतNIXI Initiatives for UA- NIXI is the only registry in the world offering the highest number ofIDN domains (15 ccTLDs) in all 22 scheduled Indian Languages- In 2014, the Registry began supporting the registration of ".भारत" ineight languages- Since March 2019, the Registry has allowed all domain operations
using an IDN in U-Label form.
- The Registry always presents both the ASCII and U Label for IDNs
in lookups to ensure that the translation between the two forms isprovided to the Registrar so that there is complete clarity as to what
the DNS records would appear like for a Registered IDN.
- Free IDN (“.भारत”) Domain with every ‘.IN’ Domain.

UA in India
India has made IDNs available in :• Hindi• Telugu• Bodo(Boro)• Gujarati• Dogri• Urdu• Konkani• Tamil• Maithili• Punjabi,• Marathi• Kannada• Nepali• Odia,• Sindhi• Sanskrit,• Bengali• Santali,• Manipuri• Kashmiri,• Assamese• Malayalam.

NIXI registry supports :‫بارت‬.‫اتصال@رجسٹری‬संपर्क@रजिस्ट्र ी.भारतয োগোয োগ@যেজিষ্ট্রি.ভোেতয োগোয োগ@যেজিস্ট্রি.ভোেতয োগোয োগ@যেজিিী.ভোেত
ਸੰਪਰਕ@ਰਜਿਸਟਰੀ.ਭਾਰਤ
સંપર્ક ર્રો@રજીસ્ટ્ર ી.ભારતத ொடர்பு@தரஜிஸ்ட்ரி.இந்
தியொ‫ڀارت‬.‫اتصال@رجسٽري‬సంప్రదంచండి@రిజిస్ట్ర.ీ భారత్ಸಂಪರ್ಕಿಸಿ@ರಜಿಸಿರ ಿ.ಭಾರತ
ബന്ധപ്പെടുക@രജിസ്ട്ടി.
ഭാसंपर्क@रे जिस्ट्र ी.भारतम्Have you tried to handle UA issues startingfrom your ccTLD registry operator or region?
Any results and lessons learned?

UA Initiatives by NIXI
Local Language Website Contest & Wikipedia Contest, building awareness about ‘.in’& ‘.भारत’, building a presence in the digital ecosystem with various languages.

UA initiatives by NIXIUA Task Force in NIXI to support UA Readiness. Helpdesk for helping email
providers, web designers, software community to guide the adoption of UA

NIXI Universal Acceptance Helpdesk

Email: uasupport@nixi.in
Tel No.: +91-11-48202040

UA: Ongoing Efforts
Participation
Initiatives.

inLocalUA

NIXI is a proud member of the UASGNIXI registered 140840 - एमजीएमडी.भारत
for digital villages.
NIXI acts as a secretariat for the UA
Implementation Committee

UA: Ongoing Efforts• In 2023, India was the flag bearer to promote and promulgate universal acceptance which
will allow internet access to a larger population and hence bring the citizens in the ambit ofeconomic progress. This work was entrusted to NIXI and a Coordination Committee wasformed to conduct UA Day.

UA: Ongoing Efforts• This year, we celebrated UA Day with the aim of increasing awareness and disseminatingknowledge about the UA. NIXI and C-DAC created and launched the BhashaNet portal,
which provides an ecosystem to enable citizens to easily create, communicate, transact,process and retrieve information with ease in digital mediums without a language barrier.

BhashaNet Portal• The BhashaNet Portal aims to strengthen the UA
ecosystem and promote the adoption of Multilingual
Internet-ready solutions in India. It is designed todevelop a comprehensive, multilingual IDN-readyknowledge dissemination portal which intends toserve as a hub for knowledge exchange, increasingawareness, engaging with stakeholders, and providing
resources for software developers to address related
to both IDN and Universal Acceptance (UA). The key
objective behind this portal is to empower thedeveloper community and interested stakeholders tomake UA-ready websites and applications for a more
inclusive multilingual internet.

To learn more about the portal
head to: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1451415959104121

UA: Way Forward- Conducting various awareness & training programmes with support from domain experts for Capacity Building.
- Enabling & Support to Govt. of India websites & Private websites for IDNs & UA.
- Support to early movers, private players, social media platforms and others for IDNs & UA Adoption.

- Creation of various Policies for UA Readiness & Compliance.
- Enabling the applications, systems and devices to support sending and receiving of Multilingual Emails- Establishment of the “Centre of Excellence (CoE) in UA” which will focus on development for essential
tools/applications for the success of UA. Currently, there is a dire requirement for:a)Development of SPAM filters for major Indian languagesb) Indigenous “India specific emailing system” supporting EAI & Various language tools

UA: Way Forward
Future Role of UA- When the global Internet community talks about the next billion people coming online, they are talking about
Asia. New Internet users work to introduce Internationalised Domain Names, or IDNs, and new generic toplevel domains will overwhelmingly be using the languages of Asia.
- We are still home to over 60 per cent of Internet users who are non-English speakers, yet, the dominantlanguage used on the Internet is English.

- To join the UA impetus head to 'https://bhashanet.in/home' ; You can use the portal's robust ticketing system toraise any queries on the same.
- To learn more about UA, Head to ‘uasg.tech' and ‘icann.org/ua' Know more about The ICANN and its
Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) created to promote UA-readiness globally.

UA: Way Forward

I encourage you all to take active participation in discussion(s) andexplore the resources shared to learn more about our novel initiative
which can help you in realising the untapped potential of the Internet.
Let’s work together to build an internet for all.