closed Draft Guidelines for Advancing UA Adoption

Outcome

ICANN org thanks the community for its thoughtful comments. Generally, the respondents appreciate the effort invested by the UA Expert Working Group in compiling the set of stakeholder-oriented guidelines and support the guidelines published. The comments provide suggestions on updating the guidelines and prioritizing them. ICANN org will work with the UA EWG to finalize and publish the guidelines based on the public comments.

What We Received Input On

The Universal Acceptance (UA) Expert Working Group (EWG) has developed guidelines for identifying strategic and practical mechanisms for encouraging UA adoption across a diverse set of stakeholders. The stakeholders include big tech organizations, open-source communities, standards organizations, software development professionals, system administrators, the Domain Name System industry, hosting and Internet service providers, public sector and intergovernmental organizations, and academia. The UA EWG has also suggested developing a framework to measure effort and outcome in the areas of awareness, policy support, implementation and capacity development towards UA adoption.

ICANN asks the community to review the report for input on any gaps in the proposed guidelines, or any challenges in implementing them. ICANN also seeks feedback from the community on how these guidelines should be prioritized for implementation.

Background

UA is a technical best practice that ensures all valid domain names and email addresses, regardless of script, language or character length, can be equally used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. UA remains an area of focus in the FY26–30 Strategic Plan for facilitating digital inclusion and is necessary for the New gTLD Program: 2026 Round.

ICANN org set up the UA EWG in August 2025 to develop guidelines for ICANN org's work on advancing UA adoption, based on the scope defined in its charter.

Supporting Information