Universal Acceptance (UA) is the state where all valid domain names and e-mail addresses are accepted, validated, stored, processed and displayed correctly and consistently by all applications, devices and systems.
Universal Acceptance Steering Group
The Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) is a community-led initiative, formed in 2015. It works on creating awareness, identifying and resolving problems associated with the universal acceptance of all domain names and e-mail addresses.
USAG aims to advocate and enthuse relevant stakeholders to make their applications UA Ready, and help ensure a consistent and positive experience for Internet users globally.
USAG is supported by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and has participants from more than 200 organizations around the world, including Afilias, Apple, CNNIC, GoDaddy, Google, Microsoft, and Verisign.
Universal Acceptance Steering Group Objectives:
1. Raise awareness of the issue among relevant stakeholders
2. Help developers make their systems UA Ready by providing documentation and getting common standards, technology and tools UA Ready
3. Encourage businesses and governments to ask their developers and suppliers to provide UA Ready solutions for the benefit of end users
4. Measure progress on UA Readiness
Universal Acceptance Engagement in Egypt
The purpose of this project is to raise awareness of UA and Email Address Internationalization (EAI) within the IT and software development communities in Egypt. Raising awareness of the issues around UA will be more effective when local software developers and their direct customers are aware of the issues and build more modern and robust systems that treat all domain names equally.
Domain Name System (DNS)
Domain Name System Entrepreneurship Center (DNS-EC), established under the cooperation protocol signed between the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) and ICANN in June 2014, will act as the project coordinator. The DNS-EC will invite experts from multiple disciplines to kick off the discussion and work on a plan to engage with relevant groups and entities.
The envisaged engagement activities may include workshops, group discussions (face-to-face and over mailing lists), media reports, among others. The results can be measured in various ways such as testing local websites to determine if they are UA-ready.
In 2009, Egypt applied to register its first Arabic country code top-level domain (ccTLD) ".masr” to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), under the name "وزارة-الاتصالات.مصر", making the first Arab country to apply to register an Arabic TLD.
The registration of Egypt’s first ccTLD is a major breakthrough in the history of Internet development, reflecting Egypt’s successful efforts. The final phase of the project was launched in 2013, and the TLD was included in the global Internet root zone.
Moreover, NTRA granted license to three companies, namely Vodafone, TE Data (now WE), and LINKdotNET, to provide the registration service of Arabic domain names under “.masr” to individuals, private or public companies, government or civil society.
This is in addition to granting the Supreme Council of Universities (SCU) a special license to register Arabic domain names for governmental, educational and academic entities.
For more information on the UASG and recent developments, please click here.
