Dear Evan and all,

Thank you for sharing your reflections and critique on the state of Universal Acceptance (UA). I appreciate your candidness and the time you took to lay out your observations—many of which are both valid and thought-provoking.

I agree that 10 years on, we must reflect deeply on the impact of UA advocacy, and ask whether our current strategies are delivering tangible, meaningful progress. Your point about the changing nature of the Internet—where email and domain names are becoming less central in many communities—is especially compelling. This evolution demands that our approach to UA also adapt to the current and emerging digital landscape.

That said, I believe there are still important reasons to keep pushing for UA, and several ways we can reinvigorate the effort:

Reframe the Mission: As you rightly noted, UA is often narrowly associated with email and domain names. But the broader vision—ensuring linguistic and cultural inclusivity in how people access digital resources—is still vital. Expanding UA to embrace content accessibility, Unicode compliance across apps, and locally relevant digital services could make it more aligned with how people engage with the Internet today.
Target the Right Actors: You made a crucial point about the disproportionate influence of a few tech giants. Engaging companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and others more directly—through technical diplomacy and standards-setting—should be a priority. Similarly, working with national governments and public service portals can create pressure and use cases for compliance.
Support Implementation, Not Just Awareness: UA Day and similar events have been great for awareness, but we need to go further—towards implementation. Pilot programs, compliance certification, and incentives for UA-readiness in local institutions could help translate advocacy into measurable progress.
Explore New Funding Channels: While ICANN has indeed scaled back direct UASG funding, there are new avenues like the ICANN Grant Program that UA-related projects can tap into. Additionally, regional collaboration and partnerships with digital inclusion funders could provide fresh momentum.
Reassess Communication Strategy: Your question—“Who are we talking to?”—is critical. Future UA messaging must be more targeted and relatable, with stories of real users who have benefited from being able to use their own language online. These stories are far more powerful than technical webinars for a general audience.

I don’t believe UA is futile—but I do believe that we must evolve our approach if we want it to be effective in the next decade. Your message is a needed nudge in that direction, and I hope it inspires others within the community to reflect and re-strategize.

Thanks again for the valuable critique.

Mutegeki Cliff Agaba
Digital Adoption Consultant Internet Society MidCareer Fellow, Member Internet Society, AFRALO, ICANN, UASG and IGF - WGWSP

+256 701 800 679
+256 776 800 679

www.mutegekicliff.com

On Thu, 1 May 2025 at 12:02, Evan Leibovitch via CPWG <cpwg@icann.org> wrote:

I am not surprised that ICANN is no longer funding the UASG, but mildly surprised at the continuance of UA Days.

This is a repost of a message I sent to the NARALO list last week entitled "The lost UA decade" after watching the NARALO UA Day activities. No edits have been made from the original.

--

Hi all,

I have read a number of the emails and watched portions of all three of the recordings done for the UA Day. They are professionally done and content-rich.

But I must ask the participants... How effective is your message? It is now 10 years since the UASG was formed, and yet apparently UA Day still has to be done. The message of the last 10 years has been refined but its essence remains unchanged. And one may wonder if there will still be a need for UA Days in 2035.

In other emails I have described UA as an "orgy of futility". Here I will attempt to explain myself, and to suggest how the substantial talent involved in UA could more-effectively accomplish its objective.

1. PERSPECTIVE AND PROGRESS

UA is internationalization (abbreviated in geek world as i18n) through the lens of only two facets of the Internet: domain names and email addresses. As the Internet progresses these two functions are declining in importance as the world has discovered other uses that have filled in the accessibility gaps.

I spent two years working for UNHCR, bringing Internet connectivity to refugee camps. The ability to connect to others and access the Internet, these days, is now 100% a challenge of physical infrastructure and less of the ability to communicate once connected. Email isn't even known in many environments -- including Gen Z in the west -- bypassed in favour of chat platforms such as WhatsApp and WeChat which support full Unicode. Every phone for sale in the markets of the Dadaab camp came preloaded with Facebook and WhatsApp -- along with SMS-based mobile banking few people needed more, and their language of choice was easily accommodated by the platform (if not the keyboard, but UA isn't about hardware). Sometimes people use a browser, using internet searches rather than typing in URLs.

With users being able to perform Internet searches in their local script, does it matter to THEM if the search results go to a URL (often hidden anyways) that looks like digital nonsense? They typed in their search and clicked on the result. They got to where they needed, using the scripts they knew. Exactly what needs fixing?

As for email, its current paradigm is understandable if not fully convenient, and really is no different from the paradigm for postal mail which is more than 150 years old. The contents of your letter can be in any script you want, but the address on the envelope has to be written using a universal script so it can be processed by intermediaries. I'm really not sure that the substantial effort being used to address this will ever bear fruit, especially since email is increasingly limited to formal functions while casual conversations move to chat.

It is IMO quite disingenuous -- and a little arrogant -- to assert in 2025 that UA is at all about Internet accessibility. The billions who have access to physical connectivity today are having no problems talking to each other, using every script available in Unicode (including the Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and the Cherokee Syllabary). They're just not using email or domain names.

The main impediment to accessibility is connectivity; were ICANN serious about accessibility issues it would be contributing to the enhancement of physical infrastructure.

2. WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?

I have been puzzled for years, wondering who is the intended target audience for the message of UA. All this talent, all this wisdom is being recorded to be seen and acted upon by ... whom?

Most Internet users are powerless to affect any of the technical infrastructure solutions necessary to support 8-bit Internet domains and email addresses worldwide. Awareness might be good, but no actual ability to enable UA exists amongst the masses.

It strikes me that there are only four entities who matter: Google, Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo, the companies who (vastly) dominate email. Convince them through direct contact and the problem is solved thanks to their combined clout. This is a task that requires subtle diplomacy and lobbying, not public sessions broadcast to the void. (I find it ironic that "public" sessions to advance UA are password-protected -- why?)

Equally intriguing by this messaging is the path NOT taken; International Standards. Why has ICANN never (to my knowledge) advanced UA at the ISO? That body is ALL ABOUT international consistency. Its processes are slow and bureaucratic, but had a UA initiative started there in 2015 (supported by the GAC) it might have been implemented as a standard by now. Had ICANN gone the path of IETF the change -- and the standard -- would have come even quicker.

It may be too late to start that now. Much happens at Internet (and now AI) speed. By the time the ISO might create an IDN standard, email and domain names may have become legacy. The strategic blunder of not going the standards and quiet diplomacy path at the start may have doomed UA, in which case this year's UA day will be no more effective than last year's and no less effective than next year's.

It's your volunteer time. Spend it wisely. None of us is getting younger.

--
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56
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