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 review the major programming and scripting languages and packages in use in web development today for compliance with Universal Acceptance good practice. The work also involves addressing any identified UA deficiencies.
Tasks
- Identifying the most popular programming and scripting languages used in web based applications.
- Identifying within each of those languages what the most popular packages or libraries are that have Universal Acceptance implications.
- Prioritizing packages and libraries based on overall usage in the web sphere.
- Reviewing packages and libraries for compliance with UA good practice.
- Engaging with communities or owners of packages to encourage good practice.
- Where practical creating and submitting fixes to popular packages.
- Reporting results over time both in terms of fixes and community engagement.
- Confer with the UASG Coordinator on a regular basis.
The current documentation is at: https://community.icann.org/display/TUA/Documents
Particularly the Quick Guides are relevant to this activity.
- Work is hourly. Document your work and bill as you go.
- 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 DNS, Unicode and the RFC series is vital.
- You must be proficient in multiple programming and scripting languages.
- 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 of how you will perform the 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.
