Bridging the digital divide through language inclusion

At the Internet Governance Forum 2025 in Norway, a high-level panel of global experts highlighted the urgent need to embed language inclusion into internet governance and digital rights frameworks.

While internet access has expanded globally, billions remain excluded from meaningful participation due to the continued dominance of a few major languages online.

Moderated by Ram Mohan, Chief Strategy Officer of Identity Digital and Chair of the newly formed Coalition on Digital Impact (CODI), the session brought together speakers from ICANN, the Unicode Consortium, DotAsia, DOTAU, the National Telecom and Regulatory Authority of Egypt, and other institutions. The consensus was clear: true digital inclusion is not possible without linguistic inclusion.

‘There are over 7,000 languages in the world, yet nearly half of online content is still in English,’ said Jennifer Chung, Vice President of Policy at DotAsia Organisation. ‘This creates barriers not just to access, but to culture, safety, and economic opportunity.’

Toral Cowieson, CEO of the Unicode Consortium, explained how foundational technical issues still limit language access. ‘Digital inclusion begins with character encoding. Things like date formatting or currency symbols work seamlessly for majority languages, but often break down for minority ones.’

Manal Ismail of Egypt’s National Telecom and Regulatory Authority stressed the importance of government involvement. ‘Language remains a fundamental axis of inequality online,’ she said. ‘We need multilingual access to be treated like other digital infrastructure, alongside cybersecurity and connectivity.’

Sophie Mitchell, Chief Communications Officer at DOTAU, drew attention to the challenges in Australia, where 30% of the population is born overseas and Indigenous languages face extinction. ‘Digital access alone isn’t enough. Without relevant content in native languages, people can’t participate meaningfully,’ she noted.

Theresa Swinehart, representing ICANN, described how historical bias in internet design continues to limit multilingual adoption. ‘We’ve made technical progress, but implementation lags due to awareness gaps. It’s time to lead by example,’ she urged.

Christian Dawson, Executive Director of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition and CODI co-founder, echoed this sentiment. ‘We’re not lacking technology—we’re lacking coordination and motivation. CODI was created to connect those doing good work and help them scale.’

The panel called for a shift from the prevailing ‘English-first’ approach to a ‘multilingual by design’ philosophy, where language accessibility is embedded in digital systems from the start rather than added later. As Chung put it, ‘It’s not just about preserving language—it’s about preserving culture, enhancing security, and enabling rights.’

Audience members also offered insights. Mohammed Abdul Haq Onu from the Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum highlighted successful efforts to promote Bangla language support. Elisabeth Carrera of Wikimedia Norway noted that 88% of traffic to Northern Sami Wikipedia comes from bots and language models, not humans—signalling both the promise and risks of AI in language preservation.

As part of the session’s outcome, each participant committed to concrete follow-up actions, including raising awareness, fostering collaboration, and supporting open data initiatives. The session closed on an optimistic note, with Mohan emphasising, ‘Technology should serve languages—not the other way around.’

The panel’s discussion marked a turning point, framing multilingual internet access not as a luxury, but as a fundamental digital right with far-reaching implications for cultural preservation, cybersecurity, and inclusive economic development.

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