The 2016 IDN World Report has been published with a completely new design and Groundbreaking findings. If you look at the 2016 IDN World Report, you will come to know that it has undergone a dramatic makeover. The report surges into the digital age with a new and sleek dedicated webpage.
The release of the 2016 IDN World Report coincides with the kick off of 2016 IGF meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico. Produced by EURid with the support of OXIL, Mark McFadden, Emily Taylor, Verisign, and UNESCO, the 2016 IDN World Report brings on a completely new and unique user experience. The report expands the horizons of readership by abandoning the traditional PDF design and giving the report an online identity.
The 2016 report features a more user-friendly and comprehensive composition through the implementation of real-time updates and the addition of more charts and graphs to allow for a superior sensory experience. The real advantage of online version is that the team will be able to easily update the content on a real-time basis.
Commenting on the release of 2016 IDN World Report, Giovanni Seppia, EURid’s External Relations Manager, disclosed that the aim of the report is to create a continuous dialogue among worldwide stakeholders and broaden the overall reach of the report. This is the main reason for publishing the report online. IDNs represent a growing market and an increased importance in the enhancement of multilingualism on the Internet.
Responding to media, Emily Taylor, the lead author of the IDN World Report revealed that there is international consensus on the need to promote linguistic diversity in the online environment. Where IDNs are in use, they are used as signals for local language content.
From their humble beginnings in the mid-1990s, IDNs have taken the industry by storm, measuring three-fold growth since 2009, amassing a total of 6,700,000 registered domains worldwide. This rapid growth can be attributed to many factors, such as an increase in universal acceptance, the importance of maintaining linguistic diversity online and the addition of new IDN extensions to the domain name space like .рф, .みんな and .eю, among others.
Seppia added that although IDNs currently report solid growth on many fronts, there is still much room for improvement. From our survey results, we can conclude that end-user awareness towards IDNs has dipped and plateaued since 2010. With this in mind, it’s important to find new ways to cultivate awareness, hence, the shift to an online based report.
In addition to cultivating awareness, continuing to push for universal acceptance is critical, as without full-fledged universal acceptance across all applications and email, the user experience of IDNs remains poor.
As of writing this piece, only 2% of the world’s domain names are IDNs. Taylor said that IDNs can be used seamlessly in every application or environment where an ASCII domain is used. The community needs to do more to promote the universal acceptance.
Interestingly, much work is being done in this area and hence we can see a sustained progress in handling IDNs as content. The day when everyone can be rightfully represented online is not as far away as it might seem.
You can access the complete 2016 IDN world report on http://www.idnworldreport.eu.
