The Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) has put out a call for expressions of interest in testing website readiness for “universal acceptance”.
The concept behind “universal acceptance” is that all domain extensions should work everywhere be that for signing up for products and services or sending and receiving email etc., So whether you are using an ASCII domain extension or one with IDN characters it shouldn’t matter – it should just work. Unfortunately, as any domain geek will tell you, that isn’t always the case and it’s often impossible or awkward to use a new TLD domain extension or an IDN domain name with a lot of online services.
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.
As part of its work the UASG has been trying to find out how widespread the problem is and, of course, whether things have improved over time.
They’re now seeking expressions of interest to conduct a followup study to their 2017 one (PDF).
What’s needed?
- You must be technically proficient and able to write clearly in English. Having staff familiar with a variety of written languages will be useful.
- An understanding of the applications of issues around Universal Acceptance (UA) and Email Address Internationalization (EAI)
- Access to sufficient facilities to perform the evaluations. Next Steps
If you’re interested in applying then you can liaise with Don Hollander (don.hollander@icann.org) who is running the UASG. Closing date for expressions of interest is November 27th.
