About UA Day
What is UA Day?
UA Day consists of UA awareness and technical training sessions which 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.
In 2023, India was proud to host the First Global UA Day as the flag bearer to promote and promulgate UA for digital inclusion. This event was graced with the presence of various dignitaries from around the world and prominent leaders of the digital ecosystem such as the Internet Cooperation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Board Chair, Interim President and CEO, ICANN, Chair UASG (Universal Acceptance Steering Group) and various senior government officials. In continuation of this proud tradition, the Committee is celebrating the Regional UA Day hosted by NIXI.
The said hybrid event is being conducted under the overarching theme titled “BhashaNet: Impetus Towards Universal Acceptance” and is scheduled to be held on March 21, 2024.
Why Celebrate UA Day ?
A cornerstone of today’s global Internet, UA offers many benefits for both individual Internet users as well as the organizations that serve them. There are currently approximately five billion Internet users, and at least one billion more are expected to come online. Most of these potential new users live in countries that speak and write in languages other than English. Achieving UA ensures everybody has the ability to experience the full social and economic power of the Internet 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. The Domain Name System (DNS) has expanded dramatically in recent years with the addition of new generic top-level domains (e.g., .photography, .technology). These also include Internationalized Domain Names and country code top-level domains. However, while the DNS has evolved, the checks used by many software applications to validate domain names and email addresses remain outdated. In addition, not all online portals are primed for the using or opening of a user account with an internationalized email address, leaving many people unable to navigate the Internet using their language and online identity of choice. Considered a technical compliance best practice, UA solves these issues by ensuring all valid domain names and email addresses, regardless of script, language, or character length, can be used equally by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems.
UASG (Universal Acceptance Steering Group)
The UASG is a community-led initiative that was formed in 2015 and funded by ICANN. It consists of representatives from more than 120 companies, governments, and community groups. The UASG works to raise awareness of the importance of UA globally, provide free resources to organizations to help them become UA-ready and measure the progress of UA adoption. To learn more, visit https://uasg.tech/
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)
ICANN’s mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique, so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a non-profit public benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.
To learn more, visit https://www.icann.org/