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ICANN Launches Universal Acceptance Curriculum Program, Facilitating a Multilingual Internet

Academic Institutions in Bahrain, India, and Mexico to Offer UA Curriculum

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24 February 2026

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the launch of its Universal Acceptance (UA) Curriculum program. UA is a technical necessity for a multilingual Internet, ensuring that all valid domain names and related email addresses can be used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems regardless of script, language, or character length.

The UA Curriculum program allows academic institutions to integrate topics such as Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), Email Address Internationalization (EAI), and UA into relevant degree programs at no charge. ICANN works with the universities to conduct faculty training and integrate these topics into new or existing courses. Three academic institutions have signed agreements with ICANN and are currently integrating the UA Curriculum into their course offerings.

  • American University of Bahrain (AUBH): "We are proud to sign this agreement with ICANN, which represents a significant milestone in the University's journey towards strengthening its position as a leading academic institution in the fields of computing and advanced digital technologies" said Dr. Marwan Hameed, Dean of the College of Engineering and Computing at the American University of Bahrain. "Integrating the Universal Acceptance curriculum into our programs enhances the readiness of our graduates to keep pace with the rapid transformations in the Internet and technology landscape, while opening wider opportunities for them to contribute to the development."
  • Universidad Modelo: "At Universidad Modelo, we share the idea of integrating everyone, and the Internet has provided an opportunity to trigger this vision and participate," said Dr. Jorge Carlos Canto Esquivel, Academic Coordinator of the Silvio Zavala Research Center at Universidad Modelo. "Our motto is 'Para Sí, Para Todos' [For ourselves, for all] in line with ICANN's vision of a single, globally interoperable Internet for all."
  • Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology (SRIT): "This collaboration is a stepping stone toward the institution's commitment to the future of Internet Governance," stated Dr. J. David Rathnaraj, the Principal of Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology.

ICANN also is working with the Association of African Universities to integrate the curriculum into universities in Africa.

About the UA Curriculum

The UA Curriculum includes 12 modules on UA and related topics including internationalization of software applications, IDNs, and EAI, which are key to enabling a multilingual Internet and domain name system.

The Importance of UA

UA is essential to ensuring domain names, including newer, longer top-level domains and those in different languages (in their scripts), such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Tamil, and Thai, work as expected in the Domain Name System (DNS). These domain names provide users with a broader choice of digital identities and allows Internet users to better embrace and proliferate cultural traditions online.

Public and private sector organizations across the globe are making their systems UA-ready to better serve their communities by supporting domain names and related email addresses in local languages and scripts. Entities that are UA-ready are well-positioned to reach a broader range of current Internet users, as well as the next billion who will come online.

Awareness and understanding of internationalization, IDNs, EAI and UA can give students considering careers as a software developer or related technical focus a competitive advantage, particularly within entities that want to be at the forefront of their industry and are keeping pace with the rapidly evolving multilingual technology and DNS.

To learn more, visit https://www.icann.org/ua.

About ICANN

ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a nonprofit public benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world. For more information, visit https://www.icann.org.

Media Contact

Gwen Carlson, ICANN
Email: press@icann.org

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."