By Ajay Data, UASG Chair

“What gets measured gets managed.” This quote is popular in business settings because it speaks to a widely accepted truth:  if you can’t measure something, it’s difficult – if not impossible – to improve it.

That’s why the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) is proud to share the newly published “Universal Acceptance-Readiness Report FY22,” a comprehensive overview of the state of Universal Acceptance (UA)-readiness in the fiscal year 2022.

In 2015, the ICANN community formed the UASG, a volunteer-led organization supported by ICANN organization (ICANN org). The UASG’s purpose is to promote UA awareness, measure UA adoption, and address UA remediation. In its early years, the UASG focused largely on spreading awareness of the importance of UA and its benefits and finding UA-related gaps in technology. While that work continues to be a crucial area of focus, the group has begun to focus more on measurement and remediation, i.e., providing the solutions to fix UA-related issues.

To achieve these aims and address UA’s multi-faceted issues, the UASG works with multiple stakeholders, including technology developers, email tools and services providers, the public sector, top-level domain (TLD) registries and their registrars, and academia. The UASG has organized itself into six working groups to help engage these various stakeholders and tackle the different stages in the UA remediation process. This year’s report was prepared by the Technology, Measurement, EAI, Communications, UA Ambassadors, and Local Initiatives working groups.

The new report builds on the UA-Readiness Report for FY21 and includes:

  • A summary of the scope of UA
  • Documentation of current gaps in technology related to UA-readiness
  • An update on the activities undertaken by the UASG in FY22 (July 2021 – June 2022)

The report is a valuable resource for the entire UA community, as well as anyone looking to ensure their systems are UA-ready and able to accept all domain names and email addresses in any valid script. The information provided in the report will help you determine whether or not your systems are UA-ready and give you the resources and training materials to address and fix any UA-related issues.

To learn more about how the UASG plans and organizes its work, read the FY23 Action Plan.

If you are looking to get involved with the UASG, here are a few ways: