Universal Acceptance

Universal Acceptance (UA) is the principle that every top-level domain (TLD) should function within all applications regardless of script, number of characters, or how new it is.[1] Historically, there were a limited number of TLDs available in strings of two or three Latin-script characters. This began to change in 2000, when ICANN introduced new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that were longer than three characters, such as .info and .museum. Then in 2010, the first Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), or domain names using non-Latin characters, were introduced. Finally, in 2013 ICANN’s New gTLD Program introuced over 1,000 new gTLDs.[2] One issue surrounding the expanision of the Domain Name System’s Root Zone has been the ability of Internet-based applications and systems to handle these domain names. For the principle of Universal Acceptance to be realized, all valid domain names and email addresses must be accepted, validated, stored, processed and displayed correctly and consistently by all Internet-enabled applications, devices and systems.[3]

Universal Acceptance Steering Group

In February 2015, the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) was formed by the ICANN community to facilitate the adoption of Universal Acceptance principles by software developers and website owners.[4]

One of the primary ways of interfacing with the Internet is through web browsers. For this reason, the UASG commissioned a report on the performance of major browsers in the treatment and acceptance of 17 different domain names registered for the purpose of providing test cases for UA readiness.[5][6]

The study found that desktop browsers generally performed well, but only Internet Explorer performed as expected. Common problems among the other browsers included the failure to properly render the URLs in the tab title bar and failing to treat an ideographic full stop as a delimiter. On mobile platforms, the results of the tests were much more varied, with the same browsers performing differently based on the operating system, with one of the most common problems being the proper display of Unicode URLs.

The study concluded that developers are making progress in making browsers UA Ready, but there is more work to on every browser except Internet Explorer, a browser that has been discontinued.

Email Address Internalization

Internationalized email address is also part of Universal Acceptance Steering Group , where Email Service providers are motivated to start providing email address for IDNs and also engage them to solve issues related to interoperability with legacy systems. Downgrading is not recommended using punycode however providing ASCII Alias email address with EAI is the recommended practice. Aliasing as downgrading technique is being practiced by BSNL[7], which used XgenPlus[8] email solution.

References

  1. ↑ "ICANN - Universal Acceptance". ICANN. February 25, 2012.
  2. ↑ "First IDN ccTLDs available". ICANN. May 5, 2010.
  3. ↑ "UASG Quick Guide" (PDF). Universal Acceptance Steering Group. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  4. ↑ "ICANN - Universal Acceptance". ICANN. February 25, 2012.
  5. ↑ "Universal Acceptance of Popular Browsers" (PDF). Universal Acceptance Steering Group. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  6. ↑ "Use Cases for UA Readiness Evaluation" (PDF). Universal Acceptance Steering Group. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  7. ↑ "XgenPlus empowers BSNL to host linguistic domains". www.aninews.in. Retrieved 2018-03-06.
  8. ↑ "Data XGen Launches Linguistic Email ID Service In India - CXOtoday.com". www.cxotoday.com. Retrieved 2018-03-06.
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