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Universal Acceptance

Overview
Get Involved
Frequently Asked Questions
Background
Universal Acceptance Timeline
Resources

News

4 March 2016 – Quick Guide for Developers Published

Quick Guide [PDF, 153 KB] helps developers understand the basic tenets of Universal Acceptance and provides practical tips on how to become UA-ready.

17 December 2015 – Universal Acceptance Fact Sheet Published

Fact sheet provides answers to frequently asked questions about Universal Acceptance of top-level domains. Interactive versions available in A4 [PDF, 143 KB] and U.S. Letter [PDF, 143 KB].

14 September 2015 – ICANN Announces Results of Universal Acceptance Study for New gTLDs

New report sponsored by ICANN analyzes the acceptance of sample generic top-level domains in the domain name system.

Overview

Universal Acceptance is a foundational requirement for a truly multilingual Internet, one in which users around the world can navigate entirely in local languages. It is also the key to unlocking the potential of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to foster competition, consumer choice and innovation in the domain name industry. To achieve Universal Acceptance, Internet applications and systems must treat all TLDs in a consistent manner, including new gTLDs and internationalized TLDs. Specifically, they must accept, validate, store, process and display all domain names.

The Universal Acceptance Steering Group is a community-based team working to share this vision for the Internet of the future with those who construct this space: coders. The group's primary objective is to help software developers and website owners understand how to update their systems to keep pace with an evolving Domain Name System. It's primary message is that Universal Acceptance will enable the next billion users to build their own spaces and identities online.

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Get Involved

Ask a Question

To submit questions or contribute additional material that may be helpful in overcoming these barriers, please send an email to [email protected] with "Universal Acceptance" in the subject line.

Universal Acceptance - Logo

Join the UASG Discussion List
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/ua-discuss

Learn More About the UASG on the ICANN Community Wiki
https://community.icann.org/x/lA-RAg

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Frequently Asked Questions

Visit the Frequently Asked Questions page.

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Background

Domain names in a TLD must be useable in applications regardless of the written script, length or newness of the TLD. The primary drivers for Universal Acceptance stem from the following elements:

  1. Longer TLD Names: TLDs with names longer than three characters, such as .museum or .plumber.
  2. Non-Latin based TLDs: TLDs with names written in scripts other than ASCII, such as Hindi, Japanese and Greek.
  3. Rapid addition of TLDs: The New gTLD Program spurring very rapid additions of new gTLDs delegated to the root zone.
  4. International Email: The introduction of non-ASCII names in email. While IDNs solved part of the ability to have non-ASCII names for servers, it doesn't solve the ability to have non-ASCII names for mailboxes.

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Universal Acceptance Timeline

Pre 2000

  • Assumptions born: User interfaces security rules were built according to "valid" TLDs including .com, .gov, .edu, the ISO 3122 two letter codes and ASCII only email addresses (mailbox names).

2000

  • Generic top-level domain (gTLD) expansion approved in 2000 and again in 2003 – broke assumptions about TLD validity in regard to name length.

2010

  • Addition of Internationalized Domain Name country code TLDs – broke assumption that TLDs must be ASCII.
  • Email names extended from ASCII to UTF-8 – broke assumptions about character encoding in email systems and viewers.
  • gTLD expansion approved in 2011; ICANN received 1,930 applications. October 2013 marked the beginning of hundreds of new gTLD delegations – broke assumption about "no/few" changes to Internet's root zone.

Universal Acceptance will be considered complete when any person can register and use a domain name in any top-level domain in widely distributed web browsers, email clients, mobile apps, and setting up online accounts for Internet and other services.

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Resources

March 2015 – Universal Acceptance Steering Group Charter

ICANN's Universal Acceptance Initiative Roadmap

Date Content
2014 September Roadmap
2014 August Report of Public Comments: Universal Acceptance of TLDs Draft Roadmap [PDF, 377 KB]
2014 June Public Comment: Universal Acceptance of TLDs Draft Roadmap

ICANN Presentations and Recordings

Date Event Content
2015 February ICANN 52 – Singapore Universal Acceptance Session Archive
2014 October ICANN 51 – Los Angeles Universal Acceptance Session Archive
2014 October APEC EAI Workshop Presentation [PDF, 805 KB]
2014 June ICANN 50 – London Universal Acceptance Session Archive ISPCP Presentation [PDF, 1.05 MB]
2014 June CENTR Jamboree 2014 Presentation [PDF, 685 KB]
2014 May APTLD Member Meeting on Universal Acceptance Presentation [PDF, 678 KB]
2014 March ICANN 49 – Singapore Universal Acceptance Session Archive
2014 Feb APRICOT 2014 Presentation [PDF, 3.20 MB]
2012 October ICANN 45 – Toronto Universal Acceptance of All TLDs Session Archive
2012 October Internationalization and Unicode Conference 36 Presentation [PDF, 2.82 MB]
2012 June ICANN 44 – Prague Universal Acceptance of All TLDs Presentation [PDF, 1.23 MB]
2012 June JIG IDN WG Meeting Presentation [PDF, 1.11 MB]
2012 May Registry/Registrar Meeting 2012 Presentation [PDF, 4.03 MB]
2012 March ICANN 43 – Costa Rica TLD Universal Acceptance Session Archive

Other ICANN Material

Date Content
2015 February Call to ICANN Community to form the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) [PDF, 166 KB]
Updated Continually IANA List of Top-Level Domains
Updated Continually IANA Reports on TLD (Re-) Assignments
2014 March Blog Post: The TLD Universal Acceptance Project
2013 June Announcement: JIG IDN WG Draft Final Report Announcement
2012 January Public Comment: Initial Report on Universal Acceptance of IDN TLDs
2007 March Announcement: ICANN Releases Beta-3 Version of TLD Verification Code
2006 December Announcement: ICANN Releases Beta TLD Verification Tool
2006 March Announcement: ICANN Creates Area on Universal Acceptance of TLDs
2004 December TLD-Acceptance Discussion Forum
2004 October Announcement: Universal Acceptance of all gTLD Names
2001 July Policy: ICP-3: A Unique, Authoritative Root for the DNS
2001 July Statement: Keeping the Internet A Reliable Global Public Resource: Response to New.net "Policy Paper"

Non-ICANN Resources

These reference links will lead you away from www.icann.org.

Date Source Content
2014 CTIC IDN Assessment Report 2014 [PDF, 1.01 MB]
2014 CITC Assessment of IDNA user experience [PDF, 4.62 MB]
2014 EurID World report on IDNs 2014 [PDF, 6.19 MB]
2014 March W3C W3C Mail thread on TLD Universal Acceptance
2014 February CircleID CircleID Post on TLD operator "use case"
2013 EURid World Report on IDN Deployment 2013 [PDF, 3.09 MB]
2012 EURid-UNESCO World report on IDN Deployment 2012 [PDF, 4.09 MB]
2004 February IETF RFC 3696: Checking and Transformation of Names
2002 October Internic FAQs: Why Universal Resolvability is Important

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."