Universal Acceptance Steering Group
Background
Universal Acceptance is a foundational requirement for a truly multilingual Internet, one in which users around the world can navigate entirely in local languages. It is also the key to unlocking the potential of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to foster competition, consumer choice and innovation in the domain name industry. To achieve Universal Acceptance, Internet applications and systems must treat all TLDs in a consistent manner, including new gTLDs and internationalized TLDs. Specifically, they must accept, validate, store, process and display all domain names.
The Universal Acceptance Steering Group is a community-based team working to share this vision for the Internet of the future with those who construct this space: coders. The group’s primary objective is to help software developers and website owners understand how to update their systems to keep pace with an evolving domain name system (DNS).
The Work
This work is to evaluate the most popular browser & their platforms (browser + operating system) to determine their UA Readiness.
Tasks
- Identify the most popular (up to 25) browser/operating system combinations. This will include desktop/laptop as well as mobile platforms.
- Using the UA Use Cases, determine how UA Ready each browser/operating system is.
- Are the domain names entered treated as a search term or do they resolve to their appropriate web page.
- Are the returned addresses displayed in punycode or in Unicode?
- Determine if the operating environment makes a difference.
- Report on the results and provide an analysis of the state of the industry.
- Provide operational documentation of the process used so that the exercise can be repeated in the future to determine progress in EAI implementation.
- Confer with the UASG Coordinator on a regular basis.
- The current Use Case and examples is in Appendix A.
- You will become an approved ICANN vendor.
- The work will be performed as an independent contractor.
Desired Characteristics
- You must be technically proficient and able to write clearly in English. Additional language fluency is a bonus.
- An understanding of the browsers, operating environments and the DNS is essential.
- Applicants can be from an individual, group of individuals, or organization.
Next Steps
Please provide us with:
- A brief statement of interest and why you want to do this work and why we should want you to do this work.
- A brief statement about how you will perform this work.
- A CV
- A sample of similar activity.
- A rate (in US$) inclusive of all costs.
- Full contact details.
- Two refereees.
Send completed expressions to: don.hollander@icann.org
If you have any questions, please send those to: don.hollander@icann.org
Please allow 24 hours for answers.
