Software and online services are Universal Acceptance Ready when they are able to Accept, Validate, Store, Process and Display all domains and email names.
This includes:
- New top level domain names
- Long top level domain names
- IDN domain names
- Mailbox names in Unicode
Source Code Reviews & Unit Testing
The process of inspecting the source code and verifying that only the correct programming techniques, software libraries and interfaces (AKA “APIs”) have been used. After this has been completed, the administrator can verify the app or service works by testing it against specific capabilities (accept, validate, etc.) listed above. This method is typically only used by app developers and online service providers.
As part of UASG’s awareness efforts, the group is reaching out directly to application developers and the largest online service providers to encourage them to perform universal acceptance source code reviews and testing and share a list of criteria which can be used to develop the test cases.
Manual Testing
Requires running multiple tests against new and non-ASCII domains, such as submitting an email address when registering for an online service and verifying that it has been accepted. Since there are a myriad number of potential online services to sign up for, as well as potential new email address combinations, this method requires trying different combinations of application, services, email address and/or domain names to provide a broad spectrum of use cases. This method can be performed by anyone, but is the most labor-intensive.
UASG is also helping promote this method by developing a list of top web sites, applications, email addresses and domain names suitable for testing.
Automated Testing
The use of automated scripts or directives to test a variety of URLs. This method requires more up-front technical work, but is more scalable to large measuring and monitoring efforts. A real-world example is the recent gTLD investigation performed by APNIC on behalf of ICANN: https://tinyurl.com/new-gtld-ua.
UASG is investigating methods of automated testing for universal acceptance and will share findings as they are available.