AAU/ICANN PROJECT – UNIVERSAL ACCEPTANCE READINESS IN AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Association of African Universities (AAU) is partnering on this project to improve the technical capacity of higher education institutions in Africa to make their systems fully compatible with Universal Acceptance (UA).
What is Universal Acceptance (UA)?
Universal Acceptance (UA) ensures that all valid domain names, including long new TLDs and email addresses, can be used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems regardless of script, language, or character length. UA also supports the ability for email mailbox names to use characters in local languages and scripts through Email Address Internationalization (EAI) standards.For example UA allows for the use of top level domains like .photography for a photography business or .higheredu for an institution like AAU . (eg.aau.higheredu). UA also allows the use of non-ASCI scripts and characters such as .شبكة or . 她把公 .The objective of this project is to enhance community outreach and engagement activities for AAU members and its relevant stakeholders in the area of Universal Acceptance (UA) readiness that ensures that all domain names, including new top-level domains (TLDs), Internationalized Domain Names ( IDNs ), and email addresses are treated equally and can be used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems as envisioned under the aforementioned MOU.
Project Objectives
- Create awareness of and develop capacity for UA within academic
institutions to make their
own systems (email servers and websites) UA ready throughout the duration
of the project. - Offer information to higher education institutions, enabling them to
incorporate UA and
internationalized domain names into their academic curricula. - Encourage higher education and research institutions to work with regional
and international partners to exchange best practices and access technical
support related to Universal Acceptance readiness.
Provide capacity development to selected universities faculty to integrate UA
modules into their curriculum and deliver the content to their students.
TERMINOLOGIES
UA – Universal Acceptance
IDN – Internationalized Domain Names
TLD – Top Level Domain
gTLD – Generic Top Level Domains
ASCII – American Standard Code for Information Interchange
USAG – Universal Acceptance Steering Group
