UA ensures that all domain names and email addresses can be used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems – a fundamental requirement for making the Internet truly accessible to everyone. Today, there are many ASCII top-level domains (TLDs), such as .AFRICA and .JOBURG, which are longer than the earlier TLDs that consisted of only three characters. UA will help communities around the world access the Internet in their own local languages and scripts.

Academia is a strategic community group that plays an important role in educating students and raising awareness in the community about the importance of UA. ICANN will partner with higher education institutions on this project to improve the technical capacity to make systems fully compatible with UA. Through this initiative, ICANN will provide specialized training, workshops, and educational material to the Association of African Universities (AAU) in an effort to increase institutional expertise on UA matters.

The initiative will unfold in three phases. The first phase is being executed from 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023. During this period, training is being provided to AAU members. Following the training, these institutions will take any necessary remediation action for email servers, databases, and websites. More information will be made available on the other two phases.