The world of domain names has changed dramatically. Domain names used to be just two and three characters long but they are now much larger in size and they are much longer in length as well. In additions, the domain name can be found not only in English but they are also available in other local languages. So when we have a domain name in Hindi, or in Russian or in Greek, you need to ensure that every browser, every application system, every phone in the world can actually support it, display it and store it correctly. This is where the role of Universal Acceptance comes into play.
What is Universal acceptance
Universal Acceptance is the idea that all domain names should be treated equally. The acceptance, validation, storage, processing and displaying all the valid domain names correctly on all internet-enabled systems, devices or applications is the main concept of Universal Acceptance. Universal Acceptance is the multilingual key to the Internet. With people of different languages who do not understand English or any other language can easily be connected to the internet. We watch movies in our language and enjoy it. Similarly, through Universal Acceptance we can understand and enjoy the internet in our own language. The success of the Universal Acceptance initiative is crucial to user’s satisfaction and ability to use several domains.
It has become a fundamental requirement for the internet to enable multilingual paradigm in which users can navigate through the entire internet in their own languages from around the world. It also unlocks the potential of new generic top-level domains (gTLD) to promote the development of innovation and creativity in the domain name industry. To achieve the state of Universal Acceptance, it is mandatory for the internet-enabled applications and devices to deal with all TLDs (including new gTLDs or internationalized TLDs) in an equivalent manner.
Need for Universal acceptance
To keep pace with this new domain world, new applications must be built and old applications and software must be updated. The successful compliance to achieve this state is Universal Acceptance. Every valid web address is expected to access specific websites and every valid email address is expected to deliver emails to a specific destination. Due to rapid changes in domain names, many devices do not recognize new domain names because they might be in their non-ASCII format or the application might not be aware of newly released TLD. However, The Universal Acceptance Steering Group (USAG) is a community group which creates awareness and resolving the problems associated with the Universal Acceptance and also to ensure the consistent experience for users globally. To understand and work consistently with the newly released TLDs, Universal Acceptance is needed.
Why languages matter in websites and how UA supports it
People speak and understand their native languages and can understand the matter more easily in their own language. The internet was connecting people with digital world mostly by using a single language. This created a problem; billions of people not understanding technologies and websites, including the Internet itself. People were not able to leverage the internet and its technologies as they were not familiar with Latin characters.
English was the top language which was used in understanding the internet but, English cannot be alone, the language of the internet. It must include local native languages as well, to make people understand about the concept of the internet with even more efficiency. Therefore, it can be projected that different languages were needed to understand and use. Universal Acceptance supports this issue by introducing several languages and treats domain equally to make people understand. Now a person can leverage the internet in an understandable language or native language and connects with the digital world.
The new domain name opportunity gives hundreds and hundreds of name to the users which can have their own identity. Whether the user wants to have “.com” or “.net” but by Universal Acceptance, it is to make sure the internet-enabled application works well when the user chooses the identity. Universal Acceptance is important to get billion of users online with their unique identification. Today, there are over 4.5 billion users on the internet and the next billion users that will join the internet in coming years, are coming from a region that is not supporting Latin or ASCII code. So, Universal Acceptance will support these users to get online.
Universal Acceptance is critical for a website's domain to ensure that the identity and domains which are registered with the websites work across the globe with the same efficiency and equally for all the constituents.
Criteria for Universal Acceptance
- Acceptance: Accepting occurs when the user provides an email address or domain name from a file or from an API (used by a software application) as a String character.
- Validation: Validation occurs whenever an application or online service receives or emits email address or domain name as a string of characters. It is intended to make sure that that information provided by the user is valid or at least not invalid.
- Storage: Storage occurs whenever an email address or domain name is received (which is used by an application) is stored in the database as a string of characters. These might not require long-term storage of domain names or email addresses.
- Processing: Processing means using domain names or email addresses in an application or service to perform an activity. The activity might include searching or sorting or transformation into another format.
- Displaying: Displaying occurs when the information associated with the email address or domain name is displayed to the user. After the criteria have met and rendering of the email address or domain name through acceptance, validation, storage and processing are achieved, the user is able to see the information associated with that particular address.
