Multilingual inclusion and universal acceptance for all communities

Summary

This discussion focused on multilingual inclusion and universal acceptance in the digital space, exploring challenges and strategies for creating a more linguistically diverse internet. Participants highlighted the importance of enabling access to digital content and services in various languages, emphasizing that this is crucial for bridging the digital divide and empowering communities worldwide.

The conversation covered the evolution of technical standards, from ASCII to Unicode, which now supports over 150,000 characters across 168 scripts. Speakers discussed the implementation of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and the ongoing challenges of Universal Acceptance (UA), which ensures all valid domain names and email addresses can be used across all internet-enabled systems.

Regional perspectives were shared, including efforts in the Caribbean to raise awareness about UA and the challenges faced in implementing multilingual solutions. The importance of integrating UA into educational curricula, government procurement processes, and development initiatives was stressed as a way to make it a natural part of the digital ecosystem.

Participants emphasized the need for collaboration among various stakeholders, including tech companies, policymakers, and affected communities, to drive progress in multilingual inclusion. The discussion also touched on the importance of creating local content in diverse languages to truly achieve a multilingual internet, as technical solutions alone are not sufficient.

The session concluded with calls for a holistic approach to multilingual inclusion, integrating it into broader digital inclusion efforts and treating it as a language justice issue. Speakers emphasized the potential for a multilingual internet to create a safer online environment for new users and the importance of engaging communities in the development and implementation of UA initiatives.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The importance of universal acceptance and multilingual inclusion for digital spaces

– Technical standards and protocols needed to support multilingual domain names and content

– Implementation strategies and challenges for multilingual digital services in different regions

– The need for multi-stakeholder collaboration to advance digital inclusion

– The importance of local content creation in diverse languages

The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore ways to promote linguistic diversity and universal acceptance in digital spaces, in order to make the internet more inclusive and accessible for users of all languages and scripts.

The tone of the discussion was generally informative and collaborative. Speakers shared insights from their regional experiences and expertise, while emphasizing the need for cooperation between different stakeholders. There was a sense of urgency about addressing these issues, but also optimism about the progress made so far and potential for further advancement through continued efforts.

Speakers

– Jasmine Ko: Moderator, Hong Kong IGF

– Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Caribbean Digital Transformation Project

– Dana Cramer: PhD candidate at Toronto Metropolitan University, Center for International Governance Innovation Digital Policy Hub fellow

– Tijani Ben Jemaa: Director of Mediterranean Federation of Internet Association

– Fahd Batayneh: Director of Stakeholder Engagement for the Middle East of ICANN

– Edmon Chung: CEO of DotAsia Organization

– Duaa T. Albalawi: Co-moderator from KSA IGF

Additional speakers:

– Phyo Thiri Lwin: Online moderator from Myanmar Youth IGF

– Ram Mohan: Inventor of the universal acceptance concept (mentioned but did not speak)

Expanded Summary: Multilingual Inclusion and Universal Acceptance in Digital Spaces

Introduction

This discussion, moderated by Jasmine Ko from Hong Kong, with co-moderator Duaa T. Albalawi from KSA IGF, focused on the critical issue of multilingual inclusion and universal acceptance in digital spaces. The panel brought together experts from various regions to explore challenges and strategies for creating a more linguistically diverse internet, emphasising the importance of enabling access to digital content and services in multiple languages to bridge the digital divide and empower communities worldwide.

Technical Evolution and Current Landscape

The conversation began by tracing the evolution of technical standards, from ASCII to Unicode, which now supports over 150,000 characters across 168 scripts. Tijani Ben Jemaa, Director of Mediterranean Federation of Internet Association, highlighted this progression as a crucial enabler of multilingual content online. The implementation of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) was discussed as a significant step towards a more inclusive internet, allowing for non-ASCII domain names. Ben Jemaa also credited Ram Mohan as the inventor of the universal acceptance concept.

Fahd Batayneh, Director of Stakeholder Engagement for the Middle East of ICANN, introduced the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), a collective effort involving major tech companies working towards universal acceptance implementation. He noted that despite the large Arabic-speaking population globally, “probably scientific decent good Arabic content is probably less than 1% of the content that is available online.” This stark disparity underscores the need for content creation in diverse languages, not just technical solutions for displaying different scripts.

Regional Perspectives and Challenges

The discussion highlighted varying regional priorities and approaches to implementing multilingual inclusion:

1. Caribbean: Krislin Goulbourne-Harry, UA Ambassador for the Caribbean Digital Transformation Project, explained that the region is still in the early stages, focusing on sensitisation and awareness of universal acceptance. She emphasised the need for multilingual interfaces to help users naturally switch between official and local languages like Creole and Patois, and stressed the importance of stakeholder engagement in the process.

2. North America: Dana Cramer, PhD candidate at Toronto Metropolitan University, stressed the importance of meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations. She highlighted efforts to resurrect previous Indigenous languages, connecting universal acceptance to cultural preservation and reconciliation. Cramer also noted the significance of including accents in French language domain names for Canadian users.

3. Asia: Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia Organization, framed the issue as one of language justice, emphasising the need for both grassroots support and top-down recognition of the importance of multilingual internet access. He provided historical context about the implementation of DNS and its relation to the development of the web.

Implementation Strategies and Challenges

Speakers agreed on several key strategies for advancing universal acceptance:

1. Multi-stakeholder Collaboration: Edmon Chung emphasised that collaboration between technical experts, cybersecurity professionals, content creators, and service providers is essential for successful implementation.

2. Education and Awareness: Integrating universal acceptance and IDNs into networking and IT curricula was suggested as a way to make multilingual internet concepts native to the next generation of developers and engineers.

3. Policy Approaches: Dana Cramer advocated for promoting policy approaches to linguistic diversity on digital platforms, while Edmon Chung suggested integrating universal acceptance into government procurement processes.

4. Community Engagement: Speakers stressed the importance of engaging linguistic experts and affected communities to ensure accurate content representation and drive grassroots support for universal acceptance initiatives.

5. Roadmaps: Edmon Chung highlighted the need for organizations to develop roadmaps for implementing universal acceptance.

Challenges identified included increasing local content production in non-English languages, addressing infrastructure and device availability in developing regions, and balancing efficiency with language inclusivity in digital systems.

Universal Acceptance as a Social Movement

Edmon Chung framed universal acceptance as a social movement akin to language justice, stating, “I think as over the 20 years, what I have learned is that in order to get us over the hump, this needs to be thought of as really like a movement and I really believe that it’s kind of like a social movement.” This perspective elevated the discussion from purely technical considerations to broader social and political implications.

Inclusion of Sign Languages and New Technologies

Dana Cramer brought attention to the unique challenges of representing sign languages in digital spaces, expanding the conversation to consider accessibility for deaf communities. She provided examples of how American Sign Language differs from spoken language in its expression, highlighting the complexity of achieving true linguistic diversity online.

Edmon Chung emphasized the importance of “UA and IDN by design” in new technologies and platforms, ensuring that universal acceptance is built into emerging digital ecosystems from the ground up.

Conclusion and Future Directions

The discussion concluded with a call for a holistic approach to multilingual inclusion, integrating it into broader digital inclusion efforts and treating it as a language justice issue. Tijani Ben Jemaa emphasized that technical solutions alone are insufficient to address the current state of multilingual content on the internet. Fahd Batayneh highlighted the role of end users in promoting their own languages and content online.

Key takeaways included the critical nature of universal acceptance for digital inclusion (including new gTLDs), the need for local content production in native languages, and the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration. Suggested action items ranged from developing roadmaps for implementing universal acceptance in different organisations to promoting policies requiring universal acceptance readiness in government procurement processes.

As the internet continues to evolve, addressing unresolved issues such as increasing local content production and ensuring universal acceptance on emerging technologies will be crucial for achieving a truly multilingual and inclusive digital world.

Jasmine Ko: you you You You Good afternoon It’s not working number two number two everyone if you’re joining us, please tune to channel number two Thank you very much am I audible Okay, great great great, okay, so Ready? Okay. So hello everyone. Good afternoon Morning or evening from the other, you know part of the world So this is Jasmine Cole from Asia and I saw Hong Kong and welcome to our NLI session on inclusion our topic It’s about we talked about the universal multilingual inclusions and universal acceptance for our communities this is a NL is collaborative sessions and I Will be starting with a little bit introduction of the topic and then Introducing our wonderful speakers here. And then there will be a guided discussion and and then our floor will be open for the audience. So, to begin with the sessions, the universal access and digital inclusions, there will be an open statement by each speaker, and there will be brief insights on ensuring that digital platform accessibility across linguistic backgrounds, and also some initial perspective on multilingual inclusion in the digital space. To divide into different part of discussion, we will be talking about the current landscape, the national and regional practices on multilingualism. Second, we talk about the technical standards and the protocols on examining the role of technology standards and to enable multilingual content. And third, we also talk about the implementation strategies on the practical approaches on how to promote and implement the universal acceptance of diverse language. Lastly, we talk about multi-stakeholder collaboration for sure, and explore the role of these collaborative efforts between different stakeholders. And may I now please introduce our speaker one by one? And I would love to introduce first, Ms. Chrislene Galbon-Harry here. She’s a UA Ambassador, Universal Acceptance Ambassador, and she’s from the Caribbean Digital Transformation Project. And then we have Ms. Dana, Ms. Dana Kramer. It’s a PhD candidate at Toronto Metropolitan University, and also with the Center for International Governance, Innovation, Digital Policy Hub fellow, so based in Canada. And then we have Mr. Tajani, Tajani China, sorry. My bad. From the Mediterranean Federation of Internet Association that director. And then also on site with us is Mr. Fahd, Director of Stakeholder Engagement for the Middle East of ICANN. And finally, our online speaker, Mr. Edmon Chung, the CEO of DotAsia Organization. Welcome. Okay, so also on the slide, actually we have our online moderator, Ms. Pio Tuleng, from Myanmar Youth IGF. Thank you very much for engaging our online speaker and participant as well. So let me just give the floor to the speaker on your open statement on this very important topic. So I would love to have Tejani, Mr. Tejani starting first, please.

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you, it was difficult to pronounce my name. No problem. Okay, thank you very much, Jasmine. As you know, the cultural and linguistic diversity as well as the access to information and knowledge for all people were among the 11 fundamental principles to build the information society as defined by the World Summit on Information Society 2003-2005. Having a part of the internet community struggling with their original languages not understood by machines and then possibility for them to access any content on the internet in their mother tongue was a real concern for the WSIS. That’s why the output of its first phase included two action lines related to this issue among a total of 11. Action line number 3, access to information and knowledge, and action line number 8, cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity, and local content. Today, there are more than five billion people connected to the Internet, and at least one billion new users are expected to come online. Most of the new users of the Internet live in countries where people speak and write languages other than English. There is a need to design inclusive language resources and frameworks that would enable individuals of all ages, all cultures, all languages, to fully participate in the digital space. Jasmin, that’s why we are addressing today this topic of multilingual inclusion and universal acceptance for all countries, isn’t it?

Jasmine Ko: Yeah. Thank you very much. I don’t want to keep pronouncing your name wrong, but thank you very much. Can I also pass it to Mr. Atmans on your open statement for this topic, please?

Edmon Chung: Certainly. Thank you, Jasmin. Hopefully, my voice is coming through fine. I’ll just keep speaking until you tell me that you can’t hear me. But I think building on what Tijani was saying, I think this is a fundamental issue. Yes, for those of you who know me, this is a topic that I care about very much for the last 25 years. But obviously, the work is not done yet. The way I really see it is that digital inclusion needs to be the driver for universal acceptance and what we call a multilingual Internet, which includes domain names and e-mail address. in the different languages. And in order to get us there or really get over the hump, I think it is very clear that we have learned that just the technical community or just the registries or just the hosting platforms is not enough. This is what collaboration, this is what multi-stakeholder collaboration means and this is what we need for a truly multilingual and meaningful access and also universal acceptance because only together we can actually do this. The other thing about togetherness is I believe this cannot be a standalone thing and that’s why it’s connected to digital inclusion, it’s connecting to the next billion of people that are coming online and also in terms of implementation because of the long tail nature of universal acceptance, it needs to have a roadmap. It’s not a switch it on tomorrow and then we’re done technically kind of issue here. It’s a long tail. You need to update your system one after the other and all the systems, different parts of the systems have different places where email addresses and domain names are used and therefore it’s a long tail thing. So I think as over the 20 years, what I have learned is that in order to get us over the hump, this needs to be thought of as really like a movement and I really believe that it’s kind of like a social movement. We need the groundswell of grassroots support but we also need those in quote unquote power to realize that they also need to take a step and therein lies what I start to call the language justice issue. In order for a multilingual internet to really be realized, we need to think of it as a language justice issue because. Every time we talk about it, those who are already online, actually many of them are already familiar with English. Without the push for language justice in a movement kind of way, we can’t get it over the hump. People need to understand that, yes, we’re gonna have to give up a little bit, maybe even give up a little bit efficiency for the longer tail, for the next billion to feel comfortable to come online. So I think a part of the learning over the last 20 years is that this is not just a technical thing. This is something we need to do together in collaboration and needs to be a movement that is about language justice.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you very much, Edmund, for your open statement. To Fahd, please.

Fahd Batayneh: Thanks, Jasmine, and thank you for having me on this session. So since Edmund spoke about domain names, I mean, I’ll try to divert a little bit from what Edmund just shared. So actually I worked for ICANN. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The key thing that we work on at ICANN is really domain names. And of course, linguistic diversity is at the heart of today’s domain name landscape. Of course, when the World Summit on the Information Society 2005 outcome document was released, linguistic diversity on the internet was one of the key components there. And so within ICANN, we took upon our shoulders to at least, I mean, since we are not into content, we did work on ensuring linguistic diversity when it comes to domain names. And of course, there was a lot of work happening within the ICANN community and even within other organizations, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force on developing protocols and standards that could actually amend the domain name system so that it can understand… non-ASCII domain name. So the unfortunate reality about, well, okay, it’s not an unfortunate reality, but when computer systems were first developed in the 70s and in the 80s, they only understood ASCII. And when the domain name system was developed in the 80s, again, it only understood ASCII. Now, in terms to include non-ASCII characters, so anything other than the A to Z and zero to nine, things need to be amended. Standards, protocols need to be amended so that these systems can actually understand characters beyond ASCII. So yes, within ICANN and in close coordination and in close cooperation with the ICANN community and the wider internet community, IDNs are a reality today. You can actually register domain names in your native languages. But then of course, as we try to find the solution to something that was missing, we bumped into another issue, which is called universal acceptability or universal acceptance when it comes to domain names. So the problem that we faced is that we saw as an ICANN community is that not all software systems understand what is an Arabic domain name or what is a Chinese domain name. And this is where there’s a huge push at the moment within the ICANN ecosystem to make all systems understand what an Arabic domain name is or what a Chinese domain name is or what a Japanese domain name is. So what universal acceptance is trying to tackle is that all domain names and all email addresses must be acceptable in all systems or in the domain name system. Thank you.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you very much. Now to Kristalyn, please.

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me here. It’s a beautiful city. I’m all the way from the Caribbean, and it’s a pleasure to be here. Now, linguistic diversity in the digital realm is not just important to preserve our cultural heritage, but it’s also essential to empower communities to be able to freely express themselves fully in the digital realm. So, when digital platforms and technologies support multilingualism, it helps to bridge the communication gaps in academia, also fosters innovation, and enables economic growth. Now, in the Caribbean, by nature, we are a multilingual society, which means that, at some point, universal acceptance is critical for us. But where we are right now in the Caribbean, we haven’t actually reached the point where we are having the conversation seriously, which is why these type of forums are important for us. We do speak a lot of English, and we realize that English is the primary language of the internet as it relates to content. But if we look at the trends, we realize that this is actually going down. So, at some point, other languages, other characters, other scripts are becoming relevant, critical to be included and accepted in our software applications, which is why UA, universal acceptance, is such an important topic that is rising right now, especially within the Caribbean region. Thank you.

Dana Cramer: and that’s kind of where the problem is arising. My apologies. You know, it’s always tough to go last in these introductory remarks because everything that you plan to say has always been said. I really like the way, Edmond, that you had said language justice because I’m from Canada and we have it that reconciliation with our Indigenous communities is a very strong topic in my country as a form of development and decolonization efforts overall. And one element of universal acceptance in my country too is trying to resurrect previous Indigenous languages overall so that Indigenous populations can then grow with their linguistic capacity and reconnect with their past, their heritage, and understanding for the rest of Canadians and those who live in the colonial borders of Canada to be able to understand that there are multiple different words that we might have lost as describing our geography. We, however, as a country, can’t fully achieve that unless we have U.A., for example, in a Universal Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics or UCAS as the acronym for this. And it currently does not exist. It’s working through right now to try and have U.A. for Indigenous populations in Canada but not only in trying to get more people online and more languages represented online, it’s also imperative to be able to have U.A. so that we have the previous populations that have been disenfranchised and have nearly been wiped away for their cultural heritage. can resurrect that in a digital space because we are stronger when we’re all connected and all together, but we cannot achieve that unless we all have our capacity to speak online. Thank you.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you, Dana. So thank you all for your open statement. Now we’re moving to the guided discussion. The first part is about the current landscape. So I would love to turn to Fahd. From your experience at ICANN engaging with the Middle East region, what region, what are the unique challenges and successes that you have observed in implementing multilingual solution in the digital space to you?

Fahd Batayneh: Yeah, thanks Jasmine. So let me say this as a story and I usually like to share information really using stories. So ICANN was incorporated and established in 1998. Of course, right after ICANN’s establishment and the organization of the first public ICANN meetings, there was a lot of discussions within the community to expand the top level domain namespace. So back then we had, I mean, the world started with all the CCTLDs and a handful or two of maybe GTLDs. Now the discussion within the ICANN community was to expand top level domains. And this also included domain names or top level domains in local languages. Of course, it took the community a while to work on the policy part of things. And then of course, the technical side of things were mostly worked within the Internet Engineering Task Force. Now in 2011, the first number of applications, the first group of applications for IDN top level domains or internationalized domain names were submitted to ICANN from countries as part of a program called the IDN CCTLD Fast Track Program. 2012, we see the first four IDN TLDs delegated into the route. In fact, Saudi Arabia was one of the four countries that actually launched their IDN-CSTLD in Arabic. Now, there was a huge hype around IDNs, but then of course, when people started embracing it, we did bump into the situation where, while there was a lot of excitement before they were introduced, however, the excitement became much less. Of course, before the introduction of these top-level domains in local languages, registries actually did offer IDNs under ASCII top-level domains. So if you go, for example, to some of the TLDs, like .com or .net, you did have the option of actually registering a domain name in your native language. Of course, for some languages, that was okay, but for others, it wasn’t. One example could probably be Arabic language or even the Arabic script, because in Arabic, we actually write from right to left, whereas in English or in many of the Latin scripts, we actually write from left to right. So that was an issue. So if you want to type www, and then you switch your keyboard so that you can write something in Arabic, and then you have to switch back so that you can write the rest of the domain name, that was problematic. Now, as IDNs were launched, and as we saw that there wasn’t much adoption for IDN domain names, there were many issues that the community started looking into. Now, if you come to the Arab region, one of the things we lack is actually local content. So the unfortunate reality about the Arab region is that probably scientific decent good Arabic content is probably less than 1% of the content that is available online. Of course, if you look at the number of people who can speak the Arabic language, there are probably 800 million, 900 million. It’s a really large number. Content is not on the same percentage or on the same equivalence as the population. Now, if there’s no Arabic content, it’s because If I can consume content in English, then I can maybe type in a domain name in English. And then, of course, with the many universal acceptability issues. Fantastic. So we have two issues here with the mic. Of course, universal acceptability was another issue. I mean, even with these Arabic domain names, back in the early days, most of the web browsers, if not all, didn’t understand what an Arabic domain name is. Email systems didn’t understand what’s an Arabic ID. So if you try to create an Arabic ID, it just doesn’t go to the other end. And then, of course, even when Arabic email systems were built, exchange of email IDs happened within that system. So here, for example, in Saudi Arabia, they built the first Arabic ID and email system, Rasil, and actually there are people in the room who actually worked on that from Saudi. You could exchange emails within the system, but if you tried to send out emails to other systems, they will not understand what’s this ID. So as you can see, while IDNs empowered communities, they came with a couple of problems. And this is one of the universal acceptability of Arabic domain names or even internationalized domain names in general is one of the topics, is one of the key projects actually at ICANN. And there are people in the room, actually, here who can tell you a story of how they tried to tackle this concept of universal acceptance from a normal ASCII top-level domain name, leave alone from an internationalized domain name. Stop here, hand it back over to you.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you very much Socorron. And now across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean region. So this is a question for Krislin. How is the Caribbean region adjusting digital language inclusion through the Caribbean Digital Transformation Project? And what lessons can be shared with the other regions? To you, please.

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Okay, thank you. So when I, when I started, I mentioned that the Caribbean is a multilingual region, right? And we are currently going through a digital transformation period. And that involves a lot of stakeholder collaboration. We’re working with academia. And there’s a lot of public private partnership, as well as a regional and international partnerships as well. We do work alongside with ICANA and the UASG group, as well as with ISOC. Now, in terms of where we are, we have to understand that UA universal acceptance has never really been a major priority in the Caribbean, because there are at some point, because we are most of what we consume is, is already in the languages that we use. So it never really became a priority concern. So we have to understand that where we are in the Caribbean is mainly sensitization and where we are trying to bring the issue alive in the Caribbean and to start that debate. What we have been doing is having what we called UADs, which is partnering with the UASG to have the annual UADs within the different Caribbean islands. That has been going well and so which means that a lot of sensitization has been happening and in addition to that some countries are looking into starting adoption of universal acceptance because while we we sorry right so we our languages we have the the the regular languages for example English, French, Dutch, etc but we also have native local languages for example Creole and Patois and those type of content are not available on the web in in or where persons in the Caribbean can consume them and appreciate them culturally. So that is also something that we have to work on as it when it comes to multilinguism and also UAM acceptance in the Caribbean. We haven’t reached the point where we have started a full implementation project but what we have been doing is looking at other regions. We’re doing a lot of sharing and collaboration to see where other persons are what we can learn from them and to see what type of strategies we can implement within our own systems to get our content you already are in terms of linguistics and etc. We are we there are certain strategies that we can look into for example the implementation of multi-language interfaces that will be able to help us to naturally switch between languages including our local languages. Right. And that and also, we are looking into the adoption of international standards to ensure that our applications can compete on that level globally, and not just on where we are right now. We are also encouraging our developers to use domain names in native languages, for example, Patois or Creole. And there’s a lot of education and awareness going on. But one thing that we’re, we’re also trying to champion is policy. So, we need to ensure that some of the policies mandate that UAE is important, and so that we can start to push it and drive it in the direction that so that we can communicate and participate globally on the rest of the world.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you, Christine. Now to Dana. So, based on your research and work with the IGF Canada, what are some notable products in North America for ensuring the multilingual digital inclusion?

Dana Cramer: Thank you very much. So, as I mentioned earlier, UAE isn’t just about trying to get certain populations online, it’s also reconciliation with populations who are also losing their own linguistic identities, for instance, and trying to make sure that we have languages kept and captured so that they can grow. One area with that, however, is the importance of meaningful inclusion of those population groups. And so, when we’re looking at UAE’s own, and the bottom up processes that I can, working groups of course will form and there’s one right now that includes having UCAS to be involved in domains. But one element for it is that Indigenous Peoples might not actually fully realize that this is happening. And so that kind of becomes a bit of a top-down approach for them. And so where you have this, for example, initiative that can be reconciling without including those groups specifically, you’re not meaningfully bringing them to the table and ensuring that they will then have the knowledge, the capabilities to be able to start including these. And so one area that we have to look at, for example, in Canada is engagement, making sure that there’s recognition amongst Indigenous communities about what ICANN is, for instance. And I also coordinate a youth NRI, and we’ve been doing this quite a bit to try to bring a bit more promotional elements about UCAS, hopefully going to be online soon, with Indigenous groups so that when this happens, we can hit the ground running in that. Another kind of mention I want to have is that in Canada, we speak English and French. And in French, sometimes for population groups, you will include accents on certain letters, whereas others you don’t. In all honesty, when I’m quickly typing something in French, I don’t always wait for the accent to come up. You just want to quickly get through your email and send it off. And that’s really normal in Canada. And so we don’t always include accents on letters. And so when you have an accent on a letter like an E, for instance, to spell Quebec, one of our provinces, we need that interchangeability for accents to be recognized, as well as our single letters, because they’re used interchangeably by the population on the ground. And finally, I kind of want to expand this about multilingual inclusion with emerging technology, specifically artificial intelligence, and talk about a community that I don’t think always gets gets the recognition in these conversations, which is accessibility-seeking communities or the disability community, specifically those who are deaf, for instance. And so when deaf communities speak, sign language is prominently used, and there’s actually a lot of shortening of a sentence in order to get the language expressed. This isn’t always the case. Like, for example, if I were to sign in American Sign Language, which we use in Canada, I’ll say, my name is Dana for it. So I spell out each letter. However, for different types of words, like one that’s topical for this conference, for instance, of saying, I really need to use the toilet, you just do this, just a quick T. That goes around and that expresses an entire sentence. And so when we have emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, though, in artificial intelligence program for generative AI, there’s not always a recognition that certain communities, when those standards and protocols and technologies are built will actually need words and letters skipped out. So I wanted to include that multilingual is not always about the spoken word or the written word. It’s also about the signed word and what is included in the sentence to ensure it’s accessible for everyone using it.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you very much, Dana. So from the current landscape we’ve been sharing in the Middle East, Caribbean and North America, and moving on to more technical discussion on the role of technical standards and protocols. The question I have for Edmund, it’s from your perspective in Asia Pacific, and what do you see as the critical technical standards needed to ensure the true multilingual inclusions in the domain names and digital service?

Edmon Chung: Thank you. So that’s, that’s an interesting question. But I think I just wanted to build off what Fahd said earlier, in terms of the basic technology for both, say, internationalized domain names, domain names and email addresses in different languages, that is ready. That is ready. But one of the things that then that relates to what Dana was saying is that there are policies that need to be in place for what we call variants. So, very early on when we looked at we start looking at different languages, we realized that for example in English, your domain name, whether you capitalize or you know use a small letter, it actually is the same thing. But if you play with words you would figure out that you know you can capitalize different ones and actually come up with different different words with the same set of letters. So, think about it that way and you realize that sometimes these same strings that people users might get confused with needs to be registered together. So, whereas in the technology itself. There are two different strings are two different domains. that map them back together. And that’s what we call IDN variants or variant domains. And that addresses some of the issues that that Dana was talking about. So I think this is one of the things and to make it native and to make it fully acceptable, including into universal acceptance that is good, you know, that is one of the challenges I think, but coming back to what I said earlier, this is going to be a long tail situation. And that’s why one of the main push from from both the ICANN community and of course what what.Asia we are trying to push for is for different companies to come up with a roadmap. Again, you know, none of us can solve it on our own. can solve this issue, you know, immediately tomorrow. So drawing out a roadmap is going to be actually one of the most important things. And I think when you think about a roadmap, it comes back to what I, you know, I touched on the language justice issue, but when you think about real adoption, one of the really important things I think we need to also remember is as I think it was Dana that mentioned this as well, we need to bring those who are affected into the solution. The problem is, you know, those who are already online are probably a little bit more familiar with English and can deal with this, but it is those that are not already online or those that are very new online. And one of the things about multilingual internet is that if you don’t realize it, multilingual internet actually makes for a safer internet for most people. One of the things that I like to, you know, use as an example is like my dad who, you know, is getting online now and, you know, asking me about phishing and all these issues. The first thing, whether I or any cybersecurity expert will tell you is that you need to look at the email address that sends you the email and look at the domain name or the URL that you’re trying to click into. This is the number one thing that any cybersecurity expert will talk about in terms of cybersecurity for those who are just coming online. And with, you know, domain names and email addresses in the language that they know, then their trusted services can actually send information to them in their language with the domain names and email addresses in the languages that they can be familiar with because a string of English characters mean nothing to them. And so a slight difference is very easy to miss, but if it is presented in the local language. That is why a multilingual Internet actually makes for a safer Internet for more people, especially that is coming online. So I think these are some of the things that needs to be in place when we think about it. And finally, before I close off, I think we also need to try to get them early. In order for the next generation of people to really think that, you know, I always think that, you know, universal acceptance is successful when one generation starts to think about why was multilingual domain names not available in the first place? That’s the right question. If we get to that world, we’re done. We’re not there yet. So we want to get them early. We need to have IDNs, we need to have multilingual domain names and email addresses. When people first learn about networking, when they first learn about DNS in high school or in first year of university, when they first learn about networking, they need to know this. So these are some of the technical challenges. How do we get it into the curriculum? How do we get, you know, make people understand that cybersecurity, multilingual Internet makes for a safer Internet? And also, how do we implement the variants into the hosting platforms, into the different technology platforms with a roadmap in place? I think these are the technical challenges that we’re still in front of us. But I think, you know, there are standards and universal acceptance work that is being done. But we need people to realize the roadmap and push forward with it.

Jasmine Ko: Thank you very much, Edmon. And now to Tijani, also on about the technical question about, because you have very extensive experience in ICANN, IGF, and regional Internet associations. How have the technical standards and protocols for multilingual… support evolved so far?

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you, Jasmine. Before I answer your question, let’s draw your attention on the fact that we are speaking about universal acceptance. And we are lucky to have here in this room, sitting in the second row here, the man who invented this concept, Ram Mohan. Thank you, Ram. Coming back to the question, as everyone knows, informatics started with the American standard code for information interchange, the ASCII. The ASCII is a standard that is encoding 128 characters only. And it is only for one script, one language. The ASCII was extended to 256 to cover the letters with accents that are used in the European languages. In 1988, a draft of the text character encoding system called Unicode. The Unicode is a text encoding standard created and maintained by the Unicode Consortium, designed to support the world’s systems that can be digitized. The version of the Unicode was the version 16.0. Defines 154,998 characters, 168 scripts. So please, notice from where we came and where we are today, came from 128 characters for one single language, one single script, to today, almost 155,000 characters for 168 scripts. Each script may cover more than one language, as you know. It doesn’t work? So you hear me now? Okay, thank you. So, and please also know that the Unicode is ultimately able to encode more than 1.1 million characters. As you see, the multilingual content was made possible thanks to the Unicode standard, even before the internet was open for the public use. And here I wanted to make a difference between the multilingual content and the multilingual email addresses and domain names. The content was possible before it was used by people, before the internet was made possible for us to use. The issue of multilingual inclusion in the internet space doesn’t then concern the content, but how to reach this content in other scripts than the ASCII. The domain name system, the DNS, was originally designed to accept only ASCII characters. By the years, the necessity to have other scripts and domain names was also increasing. understood by the DNS became insistent. The internationalized domain names, everyone spoke about before me, was created to solve this issue, not by changing the DNS infrastructure to accept any script, but by creating an interface that translates the ASCII, that translates the original script to ASCII code to be understood by the DNS. And then the ASCII to be understood for the user, it’s also translated. So this is the way that the other scripts were accepted by the DNS. In October 2009, I can approve the creation of the internationalized domain name, the IDN, and began to implement it in 2018 through the ccTLD IDN fast track that he spoke about. The universal acceptance now is technical necessity to ensure that all valid domain names and email addresses, regardless of their script, their language, or their character length, can be equally accepted, validated, stored, processed, and displayed correctly and consistently by all internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. The universal acceptance is considered as a fundamental requirement for the continued expansion of the internet. Thank you.

Jasmine Ko: First time, thank you very much to Tijani for sharing your experience. We have been talking about the technical protocols and standards, and moving on, we’ll be talking about implementation strategies. At the same time, I would love to hear from you about the future of the internet. Thank you. to introduce my co-moderator on site to the stage to continue the facilitation, Ms. Duar, from KSA IGF Place, Duaa T. Albalawi, to you.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Thank you so much, Jasmine, and I’m sorry, everyone, I was running a little bit late in one of the parliamentary track sessions, but better late than never. I would like to pose my next question to Mr. Fahad. How is ICANN supporting the implementation of multilingual solutions in emerging digital markets from your experience?

Fahd Batayneh: Any better? All right. Thanks, Duar. Thanks for your question. So, as I explained earlier at ICANN, our contribution to the digital ecosystem and all this digital transformation wave is really through domain names, whether in ASCII or even in local languages. Internationalized domain names is a really big part of our work. Much of the work has been done, probably little, I mean, there is still to be done. I mean, we never close the door on anything. And of course, when I say we, it’s really the ICANN community. So, ICANN, the organization, just facilitates these processes, but it’s really within the community where all the work happens, the registries, the registrars, even the registrants through the different constituencies at ICANN, and even the Internet Engineering Task Force, where the technical side of things, the protocols, the standards are developed. Now, again, as I mentioned in my previous intervention, and some of my colleagues on this panel mentioned universal acceptance of these of these. I mean, universal acceptance remains a key challenge. In order for us to be able to use all domain names and all email systems and all systems, we really need to push this whole concept of universal acceptance. We need these systems to actually understand whether this is a real domain name or not. So when I write a domain name in Arabic, is it real or is it just some kind of a fake ID? Just to maybe give you a little bit of maybe an imagination of what do we mean by universal acceptance? Let’s say you’re trying to open a bank account and maybe it asks you for a username and a password. Now, for some banks, for example, they would ask you for an email ID. So you just enter your email ID as the username, and then you can enter your password. Now, if I try to enter an Arabic email ID, would the system of the bank accept that? If I try to enter a password in Arabic, would the bank system understand that? In many cases, you can expect that the system won’t understand that. And this is where universal acceptance kicks in. And this is actually just one scenario. But I felt that maybe giving you an example of what we are talking about here is worth it. There is work underway at ICANN within a steering group called the universal acceptance steering group, the UASG. We do have members here in the room on the UASG. And the UASG is really more of a collective work. So it’s not ICANN working on it alone, or it’s not the registries working alone. It’s everybody who has something on the internet that universal acceptance can have some kind of effect or maybe impact on. So you would find companies like Microsoft, like Google, like Meta, like the registries, Verisign, Identity Digital. to registrars to cows go daddy actually contributing to the work of the USG it’s a collective collective effort. It’s not something that you find the solution to on the spot. There is a lot of effort going on, and I mean much has been covered more is yet to be covered.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Brilliant. Thank you so much, Mr Fahad, being mindful of the time here I’m going to direct the rest of the questions to the panelists if we can leave them the responses to one minute or a minute and a half, just so we can have the opportunity to take some interventions from from the floor. So Miss Krislin I’d like to pose this next question to you on some strategies that the Caribbean region and specific has employed to implement multilingual digital services and what were the key success strategies.

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Okay, thank you for that question. So in the Caribbean, we haven’t really dived into adoption as yet. Right, we are still in the learning process when it comes to universal acceptance, and particularly we are also embracing the fact that we are multilingual, to the point where some Caribbean islands have started to try to become islands that speak multiple languages. So we are still in the baby stages. So we are learning from others who have done it before and we’re also following the trends that are out there. So, for example, when we do, or UAD is what we would ask persons to do is to check if their websites are UA ready. So there is, there’s a there are tools available for example on the USG website that you can use to test whether or not your website is UA ready. that certain systems, maybe their email address is not, their email system, sorry, is not accepting EAI emails. Then we will try to look at ways that we can partner with maybe ISOC or other bodies to help us to guide our developers into making our systems, preparing them and making them UA ready. But one of the challenges that we’re having is while the technology is out there and it’s available, we have issues with marginalized regions, for example, and infrastructure, infrastructural divides. That is something we’re also tackling as we’re preparing for the global market. So with that, we also have another challenge, which is device being available to persons so that they can actually utilize the systems that are available. So in the Caribbean right now, while we are in the phase of stakeholder engagement, but we are driving public awareness as well, and we’re trying to basically move into adoption, but we have not reached the point where it is critical on our agenda, and which is why we are increasing the conversations, right? And maybe at some point we will be taking it to the policy level where maybe public websites will be mandated to be UA ready in order to facilitate certain types of trade. For example, as we open up to the, sorry, I’m taking a little long, I may finish up. open up to the global market, we do attract a lot of tourism. Oftentimes, persons will be required to register on a hotel’s website using their e-mail addresses. Very often, persons who are coming to the Caribbean are not necessarily ASCII character users, which means that they may have to create an e-mail address that is written in ASCII characters in order to register or book a hotel room in the Caribbean. That is one challenge. It does create a barrier and we are realizing that now, so which is why the talk has been increasing and we are getting there. Thank you.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Brilliant. Thank you so much, Chris. Lynn and I think you touched on quite a lot of important points and a lot of challenges that emerging communities and countries are currently facing, which really takes me to my next question, Ms. Dana. From your research perspective, what innovative policy approaches have you observed that effectively promote linguistic diversity in digital spaces? Again, I’m just going to ask you to keep it to a minute and a half, that would be great.

Dana Cramer: Just for the sake of time, I think that a lot of policies have already been spoken about through the panel. But one that I will note on is policies that can, when we want to have policy innovation, we need to, in addition to talking about domains and websites and e-mail, we need to talk about platforms. For example, how many of you online and in person sent a slew of e-mails today versus how many WhatsApp messages did you send? And trying to make sure we have multiple languages in WhatsApp, in different communications platforms and applications. And as new emerging technologies come through, how that can be utilized. That’s especially important as well for next generation, for youth, who might not be as prominent e-mail users because, of course, technologies are developed with new users in mind, so this tends to gear to more younger people. And so when we start to think about policy approaches and also engagement, for example, in having these discussions about UA, IDNs, et cetera, how we can also extend this to emerging technologies in different capacities. Thank you.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Thank you so much, Dana. I’m just going to move on very quickly to Mr. Edmund, who’s online today. If you could share some insights on .ages experience and implementing IDNs and making them a natural part of our Internet ecosystem. Thank you.

Edmon Chung: Thank you. Thank you for the question. I guess, in terms of trying to make it a natural part of the system, it really goes back to the word integrated, as I started with. Both the technology and how we think about it needs to be integrated rather than isolated, so it feels like it’s part of the ecosystem already. Building on what Dana just said, people say people don’t use email addresses or domain names anymore, but I still see lots of domain names being sent around in WhatsApp messages. Part of UA by design or an integrated design is that linkification, for example, making sure that in WhatsApp messages, the different domain names get linkified properly on WhatsApp or Signal or any other chat message platform. That’s part of integration. That’s the kind of integration that I’m talking about. It needs to be integrated and not an add-on. It should feel like it’s just native to that platform itself. That’s how we make the multilingual Internet into not anymore a second-class citizen. That’s, I think, an important part. Integration goes into a few other things as well. Integrating into what I mentioned earlier, networking 101 curriculum, high school, university education, integrating it into government procurement processes. of policy, for example, if government procurement processes requires IT systems to be universal acceptance ready, to be multilingual embracing, then we will see that happen. So again, integrating it into digital inclusion, integrating it into development initiatives, even Asian Development Bank work, the Belt and Road Initiative from China, all these infrastructure development work, it should integrate the multilingual internet into it natively. I think that’s gonna make a difference.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Brilliant, thank you so much, Mr. Edmon.. And I believe you ended on a brilliant note for us to transition to our open floor discussion. So we did want to discuss or touch on multi-stakeholder collaboration today. So if you have any questions that you would link to the, bring to the floor on the role of collaborative efforts between stakeholders and advancing digital inclusion, do feel free to bring those to the table. So if we can just hand the gentleman in the back a microphone.

Audience: even when you go and knock on people’s doors they might tell you well this is what’s in it for me and this was actually the issue in the early days. So in the early days, when you go and tell people there’s this thing called universal acceptance, they are like, well, who cares? Because back then, it was mostly English dominated. If you look at statistics, for example, when the WSIS 2005 outcomes came out, I think more than 90% of the content on the internet was actually in English. And more than 90% of internet users were English speakers or English native speakers. Today, the numbers are completely different. So even in terms of looking at the internet, things have changed. When we talk about bringing in the next billion internet users, it’s mostly from Asia and Africa, and these are non-English native countries on speakers. So, I mean, to summarize, the problem of universal acceptance is a very long journey. It has already started. The community has done a really good job in pushing things forward, but there’s much, much more to be done, really. So, I mean, to summarize, the problem of universal acceptance is a very long journey. It has already started. The community has done a really good job pushing things forward, and there’s much, much more to be done, really. host email addresses in Unicode. And I want to add something also as well, that universal acceptance is not only for IDNs or AIs, but also for the new generative level domain names. At the same time, the number of domain name registration for CCLDs may be two or three times the number of registration for GTLDs, whatever they are, legacy or new. So the origin of universal acceptance should start from organization as CCLD. Thank you.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Thank you so much. Tech team, can you just give me a thumbs up if our online participants can hear us? All right, great. So Mr. Edmund, I just want to give the floor back to you. I know the team on site here cannot see you, but I can assure you that they can hear you. So over to you, Edmund.

Edmon Chung: Yeah, sorry, I missed probably many of the questions and I caught part of it. Thank you. So I agree very much. And that’s why I think the new generation of developers need to know this natively. IDN email addresses in different languages should be part of the basic network 101 and not an add-on. And same with platforms. And as you mentioned, it’s not just about the different languages. It’s also about new GTLDs and how the internet itself expands. So multilingual is one aspect of it, but our internet needs to learn that domain names and email protocols could upgrade. And that requires network engineers and software developers to be aware of this quite natively and be aware of it and kind of implement it by design. Again, UA and IDN by design.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Brilliant. Thank you so much for your comments, Edmund. I would just like to call on on our online moderator to see if we have any questions in the chat that you would like to pose.

Audience: There is no question on the chat, but there are some comment. From the June, in the beginning, she mentioned about the Caribbean citizens may speak other languages, but the accepted language is English. Wherever I go in the Caribbean, English is spoken to me, despite Spanish being the country language. And also French, Spanish is the official language, but English is spoken and accepted. I speak from the experience having traveled to most of the Caribbean islands most of my life. There’s another comment from the June Paris as well. A language we always learn in the Caribbean at school and university. I study French and Spanish as a school in the 60s. Yeah, that’s all we are now receiving. And yeah, let me pass the floor back to the on-site moderator.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Brilliant, thank you so much. I think there was quite a couple of comments on the Caribbean summit. Ms. Chrislin, I just wanna see if maybe you have any comments or feedback on those statements.

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Okay, so in the Caribbean, it is correct. We are multilingual. We do, I agree with the commenter that says that we study multiple languages from even secondary, primary school levels, because that is just the nature of the Caribbean. We are a multilingual nation, right? But just to finalize, when we think of our content, And we’re trying to include different languages and also include our native languages, our Creole and our Patois. We have to consider that we would have to engage linguistic experts to ensure that the content is actually correct and also relevant. But not only that, we would also have to engage the community because our dialect is not necessarily something that can be interpreted by a regular linguistic expert. And it also comes with a lot of cultural aspects as well, which we have to make sure that the content that is out there is not only correct, but it is also relevant and it is a correct representation of who we are as a Caribbean nation. Thank you.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Thank you so much for that, Krislin. Audience, we are nearing the end of our session. We have six minutes left. So I would really like to call on our panelists here today to maybe give us in a few, you know, let’s say 35 seconds, your closing statements, and then we can depart. Thank you.

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry: Yes, it is critical that we embrace and accept the fact that universal acceptance is relevant to our community, whether or not we are aware of it, it is becoming a critical issue. And in the Caribbean, we are not going to sit and wait for it to come knocking on our doors. We are preparing ourselves. We are engaging. We are promoting, building awareness, and we are partnering with the different bodies around the world. the different international bodies, including other Caribbean islands as well, to ensure that we are, or we will be able to compete in the digital realm by embracing multilingualism and also accepting and adopting implementing universal acceptance. Thank you.

Dana Cramer: My closing remark has to do with the importance of engaging communities and bringing communities along to universal acceptance initiatives to ensure that communities who are affected need to be part of the conversation and part of the implementation as well. So that we can truly have a bottom-up approach instead of top-down in any of the components along that timeline of implementation. Thank you.

Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you. Now that we have solved the technical problems, now that the machines can support all scripts, now that the DNS can accept all the scripts also through the solutions that we found for them. Now that all these scripts can be accepted by all devices and applications on the Internet, do we have multilingual Internet? I know that the short answer is no, but even the longer answer is no. By 2024, we have almost 50 percent of the Internet content in English. I think this is a failure. We didn’t manage to make the Internet multilingual. despite the whole and the considerable effort, technical effort that was made to make all these technical issues solved. So I think that the problem is in the use of the internet. You may have an internet that accepts all scripts. But if you don’t produce content in those scripts, you will not make the internet multilingual. So I think that the main thing that we have to do, we have to make our communities to do is to produce local content in local languages. Thank you.

Fahd Batayneh: Thank you. So I’d really like to echo what Dina said about engagement. And I’d also like to add to the fact that universal acceptance is really a collective effort. Everybody has a say in it. Everybody has to be involved in it. Governments can play a really key role in actually developing policies and promoting policies that ensure that systems actually are multilingual, so they understand what characters are beyond the traditional ASCII. I also think end users have a very big role here. So rather than continuing to communicate and consume content maybe in English, try to start promoting your own language, your own content, because that’s really the way to make the internet. That’s one of the ways, at least, to make the internet really multilingual. Thank you.

Edmon Chung: Yeah. Should I go ahead? Over to you, Edmund. Oh, all right. So I guess I’ll just highlight, I think, that I do believe that the multilingual internet and meaningful connectivity, which means localized content as well as services, comes hand in hand. Some people say we don’t use the DNS. We don’t use domain names in email anymore. Maybe we use less of them. But I think it is the foundation for a multilingual internet. And I’ll give you this little piece of information or history trivia. The DNS itself, the English DNS, was put in place in 1983. Six years later, that was when the web was born, 1989. So all the infrastructure, email and DNS for English, was ready when the web came and created a lot of content that is English-driven. As Tijan, you mentioned, even today, we’re still almost 60% of the web’s language is in English. I think the foundation technologies, like domain names and email addresses, needs to be internationalized for meaningful access, meaningful local services, local brands and local language content to be expressed and developed. To close, I guess, as I repeat just two things, to make you remember, to address the issue, I think we need collaboration and integration. Collaboration among different stakeholders, technical, cybersecurity, content and services, including, as Dana mentioned, those who are most affected by the issue in the development of the solution. And then integration, not only technology, UA and IDN by design, but also policy integration, education, development initiatives. The collaboration and integration is going to be critical for us to really build a multilingual Internet. And finally, we have to make it a movement. In order for it to be a movement, we need to get the grassroots involved, as Dana mentioned and as I mentioned, to get the users involved, to get those who are most affected involved and understanding that this is going to make a difference for them as well.

Duaa T. Albalawi: Thank you so much, Edmon, and thank you so much to our two panelists. If I can just urge everyone up for a round of applause to our panelists here today. Thank you so much for your very insightful contributions and thank you so much to our online attendees. And of course, one final thank you to my co-moderators who helped put this together. Thank you guys so much, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening. you

Agreement Points

Importance of universal acceptance for multilingual internet

Fahd Batayneh

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry

Dana Cramer

Edmon Chung

Tijani Ben Jemaa

Challenges in implementing IDNs in the Middle East due to lack of local content

Caribbean region focusing on sensitization and awareness of universal acceptance

Need for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in North America

Importance of language justice for true multilingual internet adoption

Need for universal acceptance of all valid domain names and email addresses

All speakers emphasized the critical importance of universal acceptance for achieving a truly multilingual internet, recognizing it as essential for digital inclusion and cultural representation.

Need for multi-stakeholder collaboration

Dana Cramer

Edmon Chung

Fahd Batayneh

Importance of engaging affected communities in developing solutions

Need for collaboration between technical, cybersecurity, content and service providers

Collective effort needed from all stakeholders to implement universal acceptance

Speakers agreed on the necessity of collaboration among various stakeholders, including affected communities, technical experts, and policymakers, to effectively implement universal acceptance and multilingual internet solutions.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the importance of involving affected communities, particularly marginalized groups, in the development and implementation of universal acceptance initiatives.

Dana Cramer

Edmon Chung

Need for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in North America

Necessity of grassroots involvement to create a movement for multilingual internet

Both speakers stressed the importance of integrating multilingual support natively into internet systems and infrastructure, rather than treating it as an add-on feature.

Fahd Batayneh

Edmon Chung

Implementation of IDNs to allow non-ASCII domain names

Importance of integrating multilingual support natively into systems

Unexpected Consensus

Multilingual internet as a language justice issue

Edmon Chung

Dana Cramer

Importance of language justice for true multilingual internet adoption

Need for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in North America

While the technical aspects of universal acceptance were expected to be the focus, there was an unexpected consensus on framing multilingual internet as a language justice issue, emphasizing the social and cultural implications beyond mere technical implementation.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The speakers generally agreed on the importance of universal acceptance, the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration, and the significance of integrating multilingual support natively into internet systems. There was also a shared emphasis on involving affected communities in the development and implementation of solutions.

Consensus level

High level of consensus among speakers, with agreement on core principles and approaches. This consensus suggests a strong foundation for advancing multilingual internet initiatives, but also highlights the complexity of implementation across different regions and contexts.

Different Viewpoints

Current state of multilingual inclusion in different regions

Fahd Batayneh

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry

Dana Cramer

Challenges in implementing IDNs in the Middle East due to lack of local content

Caribbean region focusing on sensitization and awareness of universal acceptance

Need for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in North America

The speakers highlighted different challenges and priorities in their respective regions regarding multilingual inclusion, reflecting varying stages of progress and unique cultural contexts.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement centered around regional priorities and approaches to implementing multilingual inclusion, rather than fundamental disagreements about its importance.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers was relatively low. Most differences stemmed from varying regional contexts and stages of implementation rather than conflicting views on the importance of multilingual inclusion. This suggests a general consensus on the goal of universal acceptance, with differences primarily in implementation strategies based on local needs and challenges.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the importance of implementing multilingual support in internet systems, but they differ in their focus. Edmon Chung emphasizes native integration across various platforms, while Fahd Batayneh focuses specifically on domain names.

Edmon Chung

Fahd Batayneh

Importance of integrating multilingual support natively into systems

Implementation of IDNs to allow non-ASCII domain names

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the importance of involving affected communities, particularly marginalized groups, in the development and implementation of universal acceptance initiatives.

Dana Cramer

Edmon Chung

Need for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in North America

Necessity of grassroots involvement to create a movement for multilingual internet

Both speakers stressed the importance of integrating multilingual support natively into internet systems and infrastructure, rather than treating it as an add-on feature.

Fahd Batayneh

Edmon Chung

Implementation of IDNs to allow non-ASCII domain names

Importance of integrating multilingual support natively into systems

Key Takeaways

Universal acceptance and multilingual inclusion are critical for digital inclusion of diverse language communities

Technical standards like Unicode and IDNs have enabled multilingual content, but universal acceptance remains a challenge

Implementing multilingual solutions requires collaboration between multiple stakeholders and integration into existing systems

Local content production in native languages is essential for true multilingual internet

Engaging affected communities and raising awareness are important steps in promoting universal acceptance

Resolutions and Action Items

Develop roadmaps for implementing universal acceptance in different organizations and platforms

Integrate universal acceptance and IDNs into networking and IT curricula

Engage linguistic experts and local communities to ensure accurate content representation

Promote policies requiring universal acceptance readiness in government procurement processes

Unresolved Issues

How to increase local content production in non-English languages

Addressing infrastructure and device availability challenges in developing regions

Balancing efficiency with language inclusivity in digital systems

Ensuring universal acceptance on emerging technologies and platforms

Suggested Compromises

Implementing IDN variants to allow interchangeability of accented and non-accented characters

Focusing on sensitization and awareness in regions where universal acceptance is not yet a critical priority

I think it is very clear that we have learned that just the technical community or just the registries or just the hosting platforms is not enough. This is what collaboration, this is what multi-stakeholder collaboration means and this is what we need for a truly multilingual and meaningful access and also universal acceptance because only together we can actually do this.

speaker

Edmon Chung

reason

This comment highlights the critical importance of collaboration across different stakeholders to achieve true multilingual internet access, moving beyond just technical solutions.

impact

It shifted the discussion towards emphasizing multi-stakeholder approaches and collaboration throughout the rest of the session.

One element of universal acceptance in my country too is trying to resurrect previous Indigenous languages overall so that Indigenous populations can then grow with their linguistic capacity and reconnect with their past, their heritage, and understanding for the rest of Canadians and those who live in the colonial borders of Canada to be able to understand that there are multiple different words that we might have lost as describing our geography.

speaker

Dana Cramer

reason

This comment introduced the important perspective of using universal acceptance to preserve and revitalize endangered indigenous languages, connecting the technical discussion to cultural preservation.

impact

It broadened the conversation to include considerations of cultural heritage and reconciliation, not just technical implementation.

The unfortunate reality about the Arab region is that probably scientific decent good Arabic content is probably less than 1% of the content that is available online. Of course, if you look at the number of people who can speak the Arabic language, there are probably 800 million, 900 million. It’s a really large number. Content is not on the same percentage or on the same equivalence as the population.

speaker

Fahd Batayneh

reason

This comment highlighted the stark disparity between Arabic speakers globally and available Arabic content online, illustrating a key challenge in achieving true multilingual internet.

impact

It focused attention on the need for content creation in diverse languages, not just technical solutions for displaying different scripts.

I think as over the 20 years, what I have learned is that in order to get us over the hump, this needs to be thought of as really like a movement and I really believe that it’s kind of like a social movement. We need the groundswell of grassroots support but we also need those in quote unquote power to realize that they also need to take a step and therein lies what I start to call the language justice issue.

speaker

Edmon Chung

reason

This comment reframes the issue of universal acceptance as a social justice movement, emphasizing the need for both grassroots and top-down support.

impact

It elevated the discussion from purely technical considerations to framing it as a broader social and political issue requiring widespread engagement.

When deaf communities speak, sign language is prominently used, and there’s actually a lot of shortening of a sentence in order to get the language expressed. This isn’t always the case. Like, for example, if I were to sign in American Sign Language, which we use in Canada, I’ll say, my name is Dana for it. So I spell out each letter. However, for different types of words, like one that’s topical for this conference, for instance, of saying, I really need to use the toilet, you just do this, just a quick T.

speaker

Dana Cramer

reason

This comment brought attention to sign languages and how they differ from spoken languages, introducing a new dimension to the discussion of linguistic diversity and universal acceptance.

impact

It expanded the conversation to consider accessibility for deaf communities and the challenges of representing sign languages in digital spaces.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by broadening its scope from purely technical considerations to encompass cultural preservation, social justice, content creation, and accessibility for diverse linguistic communities including sign language users. They emphasized the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration and framed universal acceptance as a movement requiring both grassroots and institutional support. The discussion evolved from focusing on implementation challenges to considering the broader societal implications and potential of truly multilingual internet access.

How can we implement multilingual interfaces to help naturally switch between languages, including local languages?

speaker

Krislin Goulbourne-Harry

explanation

This is important for enabling Caribbean users to access content in both official and local languages like Creole and Patois.

How can we ensure meaningful inclusion of Indigenous populations in the development of Universal Acceptance initiatives?

speaker

Dana Cramer

explanation

This is crucial for ensuring bottom-up processes and avoiding top-down approaches that may not fully address Indigenous needs.

How can we integrate Universal Acceptance and Internationalized Domain Names into basic networking and computer science curricula?

speaker

Edmon Chung

explanation

This is important for making multilingual internet concepts native to the next generation of developers and engineers.

How can we integrate multilingual internet considerations into broader development initiatives and infrastructure projects?

speaker

Edmon Chung

explanation

This is important for ensuring multilingual internet is considered in large-scale development efforts.

How can we address the challenge of producing more local content in local languages?

speaker

Tijani Ben Jemaa

explanation

This is critical for truly making the internet multilingual, beyond just solving technical issues.

How can governments develop and promote policies to ensure systems are multilingual and understand characters beyond ASCII?

speaker

Fahd Batayneh

explanation

This is important for driving adoption of Universal Acceptance at a policy level.

How can we create a social movement around language justice in the digital space?

speaker

Edmon Chung

explanation

This is important for building grassroots support and involving those most affected by language barriers online.