Update on the Universal Acceptance Expert Working Group (UA EWG) Guidelines for advancing Universal Acceptance.

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Universal Acceptance (UA) is not just an ICANN issue, but ICANN has an important role to play. UA is also not just about Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), but IDN is an important component that links UA with the wider topic of multilingualism and internationalization throughout the tech stack.  IDN elevates UA beyond a technical matter to one that relates to digital inclusion, meaningful access, local language content and services online, etc. – a matter of language justice.

These realizations are included in part of the key findings of the UA Expert Working Group (UA EWG) that recently completed its work in producing a set of guidelines giving substance to ICANN’s strategic plan directive on IDN and UA. With the UA directive being formally incorporated into ICANN’s strategic plan for the first time, the UA EWG saw through the development of the substance for the fulfilment of such plan.  The UA EWG was constituted of members from the GNSO, ccNSO, ALAC, GAC, GAC, SSAC and the ICANN Board, along with individuals (past or present) from the Unicode Consortium, UNESCO, W3C, IAB as well as academia and big tech, giving it broad and diverse perspectives fit for the task.

The UA EWG, called by the President and CEO of ICANN, began its work in August 2025, almost exactly 25 years after the first ICANN President’s Advisory Committee on IDN was established in September 2000.  Of course, in the interim, there had been other community groups that were formed, including bottom up initiatives: UASG, At-Large IDN Policy Working Group (Ed. status inactive), GAC UA-IDN Working Group, ccNSO UA Committee; and, the ICANN Board IDN-UA Working Group.  However, the UA EWG represents the first ever community wide group formally chartered to tackle the issue, 25 years after the introduction of new gTLDs and IDNs.  It is particularly worth noting because UA, a topic that was once understood as only a market and technology adoption issue, is finally recognized by ICANN as also part of the social and development agenda warranting intervention and advocacy.

The UA EWG, ably assisted by ICANN supporting staff, completed its work within a year, publishing its draft guidelines for Public Comment from 23 February through 13 April 2026.  Following that public comment proceeding, the UA EWG updated their draft and on 9 September 2026, the resulting Guidelines for Advancing Universal Acceptance (UA) Adoption was published. It contains 45+2 guidelines across 10+1 charter topics, with:

  • The additional charter topic being the recognition for the overarching concern in situating UA as part of the broader issue of internationalization of IT systems, and the penetrating relevance throughout the tech stack; and 
  • The inclusion of 2 additional guidelines based on community input through the public comment process, adding considerations for a broader spectrum of stakeholders such as startups and SMEs, and most importantly adding consideration for AI tools

The explicit calling out for consideration on AI was initially puzzling – as in, what does AI have anything to do with the nature of tasks of UA and IDN?  But community feedback at a recent UA session, organized by ICANN APAC friends, held at the APEC TEL 73 Meeting and 2026 APEC Digital Week in Chengdu, revealed gravity of the matter – a major insight emerged about the impact of AI on UA, namely the realization that whether AI generated code produced UA-ready programs by default will have profound impact on the immediate and long term future of UA adoption.  If AI models are trained to be Multilingual-First – natively supporting IDN and EAI, it will usher in a new era of rapid UA adoption; however if AI models fall to English-first systems it will reinforce existing barriers and create new software roadblocks.  Ensuring that AI tools are built with UA by design is therefore essential to creating an open, inclusive and truly multilingual Internet for all.

For more information about the UA EWG and its work, visit the following ICANN website links:

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