The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> RAM MOHAN: Good morning. Good day. My name is Ram Mohan, and welcome to the session, Bridging the Digital Divide, Language Inclusion as a Pillar. Despite global efforts to expand internet access, linguistic diversity remains an overlooked barrier to digital inclusion. With over 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, the dominance of a few, major languages that are online prevents billions of users from fully participating in digital spaces.
Today's workshop will explore how language accessibility can be integrated into internet governance, as well as digital rights frameworks, and what connectivity strategies can ensure universal access and universal acceptance.
What we have here is a panel of experts and leaders who have been working in the multilingual domain name and multilingual space, and we will have both a bit of a policy discussion as well as a conversation about actual use cases that demonstrate both the need as well as the ability to solve for the actual problems of digital inclusion.
So let me begin, first, with some introductions. Let me start with myself. My name is Ram Mohan. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer of Identity Digital, which is a domain name registry company, but I'm here, in addition to that, as the chair of an exciting and newly formed group, the Coalition for Digital ‑‑ on Digital Impact, or CODI, in short, and we are really pleased to be here. We invite you to become a part of CODI by going to CODI.global.
Let me turn to my online moderator, Christian, and ask him to introduce himself and carry on from there.
>> CHRISTIAN DAWSON: Happy to do so. I am the online moderator for today. My name is Christian Dawson. I'm Executive Director of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, a tech trade association. We have been working for over a decade on issues involving universal acceptance, and I'm proud to be a co‑founder and co‑facilitator of the CODI effort that we'll talk a little bit about today.
>> RAM MOHAN: Theresa. There we go.
>> THERESA SWINEHART: This is a press the button one, fantastic. I'll try it again.
Theresa Swinehart. I'm with ICANN. I oversee our work with regards to policy implementation and various other aspects on DNS abuse and some of the programs we have that are a cross‑collaboration with the community and the board, as well.
One area, in particular, here is our work on not only the next round of top‑level domains, which will afford opportunities, but also universal acceptance and our work around internationalized domain names.
Very excited to be here and look forward to the discussion. Thank you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much.
Let me turn to you, Toral.
>> TORAL DAFTARY COWIESON: Great. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. Thank you, Ram and CODI, for this invitation. I'm Toral Cowieson. I'm the CEO of the Unicode Consortium. Unicode is a nonprofit, an open source, open standards body whose mission is to ensure that everyone can communicate on all devices in their own languages. Digital inclusion starts with Unicode, starts with the work of Unicode that includes character in coding. Thank you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Jen?
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Thank you, Ram and CODI, for the invitation. My name is Jennifer Chung. I'm Vice President of Policy for DotAsia organization. We are the DotAsia top level domain registry operator. In terms of internationalized domain names, we have done quite a lot of work and, of course, we support universal acceptance. Looking forward to the discussion. Back to you, Ram.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much.
Sophie, let me come to you.
>> SOPHIE MITCHELL: Thanks very much, Ram. Hi, everyone. Pleased to join you from here in Australia. I'm Sophie Mitchell. I'm the Chief Communications Officer at the Dot AU, so the registry operator for Australia. Yeah, auDA is really committed to enhancing digital inclusion and improving the utility of the internet or the Dot AU for the benefit of all Australians. We do quite a bit of work through the public benefit and grants program which we may touch on in the course of this evening.
Thanks, Ram. Back to you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much.
Manal?
>> MANAL ISMAIL: Thank you, Ram. Hello, everyone. My name is Manal Ismail. I'm with the National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt, and we've been working on the introduction of internationalized domain names and universal acceptance efforts, and now we're progressing through multilingual internet experiences for quite a number of years now. I look forward to our discussion today. Thank you, Ram. Back to you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you, Manal.
So, we are looking to have a discussion here in a couple of parts. The first part I thought might be useful to illustrate, the nature of the issues that are facing us and the kinds of, not just challenges, but also some potential solutions that might be there. We thought it might be instructive to ask folks who are actually doing the work of inclusion and to have them share what they are finding from the ground.
Toral, shall I turn to you and ask you for what you're seeing, you know, in your role and in your organization's role in this area?
>> TORAL DAFTARY COWIESON: Certainly. Thank you so much. So when we're looking at digital inclusion, for those of us in majority languages, there are things that ‑‑ many things we can take for granted. For example, can I exchange currency, date and time format, time zone adjustments, usage of numerical symbols, are decimals and commas, separators used appropriately? If I am using an application, does the country name appear appropriately?
Those are things that we take for granted, but that's not necessarily the case for those in digitally disadvantaged language communities. And I think that's where the bulk of the work has to be done. Ram, when you mentioned the 7,000 languages, the majority of languages, the characters of those languages are encoded, but it is all of those other things that we take for granted.
Can I search on my emoji in the language that I use? There's still a lot to do, and I think even with IDNs, we know that from a content perspective, that full representation and that full user interface is not there.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you, Toral.
Jen, what do you see?
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: I guess in terms of multilingual internet, I think that is really the foreground and background and through the entire thread of what we're looking at. Going to take a half step back because when you look online and are searching online, if your language is not English, it's not your native language, you're not really searching in that language.
I'll be taking out my phone, searching in Chinese and speaking in Cantonese to my phone, as well.
Almost 50% of the content online is still in English, and though English is the most widely spoken language, in terms of population and breadth, it's not the native language or first language or even second and third languages for a lot of people who use the internet and those who, of course, are yet to come online.
It is really important to remember, you know, the other part of the need to actually, you know, think about why we need this multilingual internet. If we don't have this, exactly what you said, all these languages will go away. I think there was a statistic somewhere that said, you know, 90% of the world's languages might become extinct at the end of this century. That's a big loss, not in terms of how we communicate, but, really, it's human culture.
Just kind of putting this out there as a first of demonstrating the need and something we really do need to start looking at and doing something about.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you, Jen.
Sophie, what has your experience been in the regions that you and your organization have been involved in?
>> SOPHIE MITCHELL: Thanks, Ram. Yeah, so taking it back to here in Australia, I think Australia is one of the greatest countries in the world. I, of course, would say that. But we have about 30% of our population who are actually born overseas. They don't just come from parents who were born overseas. They are, themselves, born overseas, so that's in a population of 28 million, it's about 8.5 million people or thereabouts born overseas. Some of those come with English language skills, but many, of course, do not.
That's our migrant population, but, of course, Australia was a colonized country, so first, Australias who have been living here for many thousands of years actually have 250 language groups. Indeed, they did when the British arrived and settled Australia.
Unfortunately, through the process of colonization over the 200 plus years, we lost about half of the indigenous language groups. Many of those are endangered today. Certainly echo what Jen was saying, and that is an issue here in Australia, is capturing those endangered languages. Because, of course, the other problem we have in capturing them is that they weren't written languages. They were oral languages and told through a culture of storytelling. Of course, the culture was impacted adversely by colonization because indigenous families were ‑‑ children were separated if their families and moved onto reservations, as has happened in many countries, and a lot of that knowledge was lost.
Really, we're starting from a step back in trying to find those languages, preserve those languages, and then, of course, then we can address some of the digital inequities we see within indigenous communities. I'm sure we'll go on to talk about those this evening. Thanks, Ram.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you, Sophie.
So as you heard from, you know, Jen, what you're saying, as well as what you just shared with us, Sophie, the challenges are not just in representing languages but, in some cases, representing languages that have no written representation.
Toral, how does that work, you know, from the perspective of the Unicode consortium?
>> TORAL DAFTARY COWIESON: That's certainly a very real issue. In fact, UNICODE's work is really around written languages, so that is not something the Unicode consortium is addressing at this point because of the work still to be done with the written scripts. I'm curious to hear how others are addressing that, but that's the reality of Unicode's mission.
>> RAM MOHAN: Manal, what is your perspective on other challenges that may exist when it comes to, you know, getting the internet to be more multilingual?
>> MANAL ISMAIL: Thank you, Ram. From a government perspective, the multilingual internet is crucial. It is essential for the continued growing of online population and necessary to have the next billion users connect meaningfully to the internet.
As already mentioned, we have already one‑third of the world's population still offline, which is alarming to me. In the future, the progress is moving too slowly on has regressed below the 2015 baseline. So I think we need to think about the reasons and how to make sure that technology is really serving humanity in that respect.
And while digital inclusion includes the promises of global information and access, language remains a fundamental access of inequality and a barrier that's commonly overlooked. It restricts individuals' access to critical services, limits economic opportunities, and as already Jen mentioned, it holds cultural identity.
We have a long list of challenges here. The limited availability of online multilingual content, poor quality or absence of machine translations, cultural irrelevance resulting from literal translations without really cultural localization. As you already mentioned, some platforms and softwares prioritize the small subset of global, dominant languages, and this also touches on the bias in AI and natural language processing. High cost of building global digital tools making it economically unfeasible. Sometimes de‑prioritizing language accessibility in favour of faster and bolder market scaleability.
Often, things are delivered in dominant languages, resulting in digital literacy gaps. All this, unfortunately, is in a vicious cycle with younger generations loving being fluent in ancestral languages, weakening even more the user base for potential language inclusivity.
I'll leave it at this. Back to you, Ram. Thank you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Manal, that is powerful, what you just said. And you listed not just the ‑‑ some of the challenges, but also some of the consequences of not addressing these challenges.
Theresa, what are your points of view on the policy gaps, as well as some of the technical challenges that we're seeing? And, you know, what is your organization doing to help bridge those?
I'd also be interested to hear your views on what you think, you know, are the remaining inequities, even after the work that is being done?
>> THERESA SWINEHART: Those are a lot of questions. We have a couple hours, right? So there's a couple factors, and I think what I'm really struck by in these conversations is the internet itself and within our context of what ICANN does, the addressing space, is an incredibly powerful medium.
Its goal is to be unfragmented and enable more people to come online, and yet, at the same time, we are seeing a saddening erosion of use of languages around that. From that, I think we need to cross this barrier of, yes, the internet was originally designed in the context of the use of Roman character sets, and that's just a historical factor. Had it developed in a different part of the world, it would have been different. But how do we now create the right awareness that we can bridge into these areas?
And so, from ICANN's perspective, we're engaged in quite a few different things. One is the work around internationalized domain names. So from a technical standpoint, enabling the use with language tables and various others on the technical inter face from that standpoint. There's a lot of material around that and colleagues working on that.
With that, you know, how does one not only have one's e‑mail or anything of that sort, but also to the right or to the left of the dot, if I can put it that way, in the context of various script. Working with many communities there. And then partnering with many other organizations with regard to awareness of universal acceptance.
Now, the term universal acceptance may sound a little bit odd, but what it actually means is the resolvability of one's experience with one's address or with one's website or with one's domain name, and for that to interface through the different applications and enable a communication. Now, that's a simplified description of it, and I think the engineers would probably just pull me aside and say, you know, there's a lot more to this.
The point is, is that we have a demand for languages. You know, UNESCO is running a decade of indigenous languages, and this is quite important for preserving languages, whether they're written or oral. But we now need to do an awareness that there is a demand, and the supply needs to meet the demand. That disconnect is one that's fundamentally important.
It is feasible to have one's entire experience online as one would expect offline, but we need to take the next step to make that feasible.
I'll just do one more thing, and then I'll hand it over. So we have been engaged with many others. We have a partnership, MOU, with UNESCO, with many other organizations, in working with them for awareness, but also have a universal acceptance day that is really looking at creating awareness at local levels about the opportunities that can occur if one works towards this.
So we have a lot of work to do, but I'm hopeful. For oral languages, that is the content that can then be online, and it's fundamentally important around that. So a few things here and there, and I'm happy to add on later. Thank you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you, Theresa.
Sophie, I'm going to come to you and ask, what kinds of incentive‑based approaches have you and your organization thought of as effective ways for the adoption of digital content and services in local languages?
>> SOPHIE MITCHELL: Thanks, Ram. I think one of the things we're focused on here, and I think Theresa summed it up really nicely when she said we need supply to meet demand, and so part of the problem we see here is that indigenous languages aren't widely spoken. We also have a really ‑‑ quite a big skills gap in Australia, you know, indigenous population, so that's been mapped. The government has been doing some work since the early 2020s on the indigenous digital inclusion, and we do have in Australia an indigenous digital inclusion index. So this gap is actually mapped. We've just had funding to continue that index over the next three years.
So there is an access gap. Indigenous access, there's an ability gap, so the skills gap, and also an affordability gap, because we do see in Australia that our indigenous population more likely to live in remote areas and, therefore, less likely to have access to high‑paying jobs in those areas.
As I mentioned earlier, through the public benefit fund, there is a community grants program through which it funds a number of initiatives. The initiatives we've really tried to fund over recent years have been about supporting both recording indigenous languages, so that they can be used, and also increasing the skills of indigenous communities, so their digital skills, so they can participate in the digital economy and up‑skill so, you know, they may get jobs and, I guess, also can participate in civic society and access government services, as well. That's another area we see gaps. People who lack the digital skills tend to use the internet in a more simplistic way, so often for social connection, using social media or for telephone calls, but they don't extend that use for other purposes. It can be quite exclusionary.
There are things we are looking to try to improve so we can increase that economic participation and grow Australia's digital economy. Thanks, Ram.
>> RAM MOHAN: Fantastic.
Jen, Sophie just brought in this concept of meaningful connectivity, right? It's not enough to simply be connected and stream and use for social media, but make that connectivity more meaningful. What do you see in the Asia Pacific region in terms of meaningful connectivity? Many governments and other folks are spending lots of money connecting populations, but what challenges exist to make connectivity meaningful, to get populations to actually achieve agency online?
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Thanks, Ram. I'm going to pick up on the last word you mentioned. Agency is absolutely the most important part. Because after you connect the populations who are previously unconnected or underserved, they might not know how to use technology. They might not know what kind of ways they can search.
For example, like I said, they wouldn't know they could search with their native language if all the content they see right now is in a different language that they don't understand.
Capacity building is definitely the key thing here, but then targeted to actually bringing them online, to understand what they can do. There could be e‑services, could be education. The different parts of capacity building must really direct to the populations that are most vulnerable for them to understand. One thing I really want to point out is multilingual internet is not only about preserving language.
In fact, having the thinking that multilingual internet actually makes it safer and, you know, for example, I like to take my father, who is a bit elderly now. If I tell him that he needs to do, you know, certain things on this website, to make an appointment for his, you know, health check‑up, he would most likely be like, "I won't want to do this if I can't read this. I don't understand. I have to find someone else to explain to me all these different procedures."
But if everything is able to be searched, navigated, content wise, also, in his native language, he will feel a lot better.
Another thing I want to point out, you know, we talk all about bad actors online trying to spoof these things, but actually understanding the language makes it much easier for perhaps populations who don't have English as a first language to, first, understand that, oh, this actually looks a little strange to me, and understand that.
You know, I'm fortunate to be able to understand that, you know, when I see some spoof e‑mail or something like that, I won't click on it because that looks strange to me and I can read the English. For someone who doesn't understand the characters at all, that could be a huge mystery. I think understanding that, having this actually makes for a safer internet, is something that we need to think about.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thanks, Jen.
Christian, you've been helping to work on this area for a while. You helped co‑found CODI. What is happening there to help address some of these challenges?
>> CHRISTIAN DAWSON: Thanks, Ram. I'm glad Jen brought up cybersecurity, and it is an important topic. There are a number of different reasons why focusing on digital inclusion is so important right now. That is certainly one of them.
There are surfacing all of the reasons why it is important to act on this at the moment. It's one of the goals of CODI as an initiative. The initiative is focused on attempting to bring together all the different parts of the community that are going to need to collaborate together in order to make a difference to move this forward.
One of the fundamental things we sort of have to realize is that the underlying technology, in many ways, has been complete and has been completed for some time. What we're dealing with is a situation where the awareness is required because we are fighting inertia. There is a timeliness now in the era of advancing AI, when people are using the internet directly are LRMs. There are these language, these data‑rich languages and many, many, many data‑poor languages.
So you get into these situations where we need to advance all of the arguments for people to put the effort in, to go ahead and take the technologies that already exist and advance them toward multilingualism. We need to bring the arguments about cybersecurity, about the importance of inclusion, so that they can be part of the digital economy and grow the economy.
Also, as we were saying, because we can't lose the stories and the histories that exist from these cultures. There are many reasons why we learn history in order to make sure we don't repeat it, but, also, so that we can live harmoniously in societies and not advance toward war and disharmony. All these different arguments are the things we need to bring to bear.
We have a number of initiatives we're pulling together with CODI. Some are simple. One of them that we are advancing at the moment is we're starting to try to figure out how to gather data that will show that if people build tools for language inclusion at the last mile, it will be more likely that the individuals who are recipients of those tools will use the internet more.
It's quite obvious that that would be the case, but in order for businesses to go ahead and commit time and resources, quite obvious isn't good enough, right? They actually need hard data and there aren't really many studies that show these kinds of things. That's one example of the many projects we're going to be putting together and advancing with CODI.
We hope you'd join us.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much.
Manal, in terms of government initiatives to support language accessibility and digital spaces, what has been the experience with your government?
>> MANAL ISMAIL: Thank you. Thank you very much, Ram. When the internet fails to speak your language, it's not just inconvenient, it's a barrier to health, education, and livelihood.
And as Sophie hinted, governments have been important and powerful roles in encouraging the development and adoption of multilingual digital content in order to foster digital inclusion. And it's a mix of both approaches but also incentive‑based approaches, in order to balance enforcement with supportive frameworks and capacity building.
a regularity approach of multilingual access for key digital platforms and services, especially in public sectors. Expanding digital accessibility laws and regulations to explicitly include language accessibility alongside disabilities. And making multilingual support a prerequisite for public contracts or national programs.
As for the incentives, these may also include offering fundings for projects that develop digital tools on platforms in underrepresented languages. Providing tax breaks or reductions or subsidies, even, to companies that integrate inclusive language practices. And forming public‑private partnerships, also, with technology firms and universities to build and maintain inclusive digital ecosystems.
Also, to establish a recognition or some sort of certification program for digital inclusion, digital language inclusion in order to recognise platforms that meet government requirements in that respect.
Finally, also, investing in capacity‑building programs for developers and translators as needed. So in a nutshell, in order to ensure that inclusive language support is not an obstacle, but the core pillar of national and digital transformation strategies, effective government strategies should integrate mandates, ensuring investment and innovation, and collaborative frameworks to ensure accessibility and community participation.
Thank you, Ram. Back to you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you, Manal.
Toral, what are the fundamental technical limitations or design paradigms that have historically contributed to the internet's bias linguistically toward a few dominant languages?
>> TORAL DAFTARY COWIESON: So I think, you know, the technical limitations have been, at least from a Unicode perspective, have been addressed on our side, but where the challenge is is really engaging the language communities themselves for the remaining work to be done.
That's where, you know, when I talked about kind of that full, immersed experience, that's where the limitation is. You know, part of it is on the Unicode side is people don't know that there is work to be done. And how do we effectively equip and empower those communities to be part of the solution to ensure that solution is in place?
So, that's really the issue. And, you know, our member organizations have tended to be the big tech companies. Originally, the priorities were the majority languages. But, now, they are also realizing that it doesn't ‑‑ it serves their better interest, as well, to make sure these other communities are online. So we do see organizations like, you know, certainly Google, Meta, Airbnb, where they have access to native speakers, and they're bringing those individuals into that work for that full experience.
You know, from a kind of core technology perspective, it's just getting language communities.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you, Toral.
I'm going to turn to now ‑‑ we spent some time looking at the challenges, identifying some of the barriers that exist. Let's turn our attention to practical things that we can actually do.
I'm actually going to turn to each of the folks here on the panel, and I'm going to ask you this question. Looking at the landscape of existing efforts, which is one area where you see significant potential for accelerating progress towards a multilingual internet?
So let me ask that and turn to you, Jen, first.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: The one thing that will accelerate the most, I think the one thing that will accelerate it the most is a paradigm shift, to thinking about, looking at it as multilingual first opposed to English first. To look at it by, you know, multilingual by design, universal acceptance, UA by design. That actually sets us up for success.
Because when we have that mentality, all of the stakeholder groups, the governments will understand exactly what Manal says, you know, this is part of national strategy. It is not an after thought. For those coding, they'll know, this is what it is we learn. This is how we do it. Instead of doing it the previous way.
In terms of, you know, private sector, too, that's also the incentive, so that's the mind shift that is one thing that will accelerate it.
>> RAM MOHAN: Theresa.
>> THERESA SWINEHART: I think it's spot on to have a paradigm shift. One should have an expectation that one's experience online is the same as offline. I think there's a couple areas where one can look at that. One is around education and educating and creating modules in coursework. Whether it's around policy or around a technical area. We run a program where we're working with universities on specific modules to have awareness and education around these areas.
We just recently ran a hackathon in Bahrain, which was incredible to watch 60 students have a task of coming up with a website and how to have that be able to work in both Arabic and in English. So I think there's some very pragmatic, very specific things to do.
I think there's also some other areas around procurement, that there is an expectation that in the future, one has to supply things in this kind of way. To add on to that, there's also opportunities, as we've talked about, we open the next round next year with applicant support for specific categories to create the opportunity to have what one wants to the right or left of the dot in one's language.
It's fundamental that there is a paradigm shift, as has been said. The expectation is as a user, have the experience in the online digital world as one would in the offline world. And the benefit is not only societal. It's not only the opportunity to engage with the hospital or a university or education or provide that information and retain cultural norms and cultural values. One's home, you know, that's anchored in who we are as individuals, how we communicate with each other. There's also educational opportunities. From a business perspective, you know, there's entire populations that have no consumer interest, potentially, in whatever somebody is providing because they don't have a connection because of the language barrier.
So it's not about economics only. It's about society and affording that ability for everyone to have the experience in the internet. So I think we have many, many things to do. From ICANN's perspective, we're doing things very specific and partnering with others because nobody can do this alone.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thanks, Theresa.
Sophie, one area you see significant potential for accelerating progress toward a multilingual internet.
>> SOPHIE MITCHELL: Thanks, Ram. I find it really difficult because I think both Jen and Theresa there have hit on two really key elements. I think, yeah, people don't participate because, in many cases, they're excluded, so they can't, and that mindset shift isn't there.
I've spent a lot of time thinking, since I was invited to speak on this panel, about whether technology will help solve it. Will AI translation actually accelerate it or be part of the problem? Because do we worry about a multilingual internet if you don't have to? Or if you have those translation skills there.
That's not really a mindset shift, but I do think it'll be a very big shift and, I hope, accelerate the availability of the internet for those who are currently excluded. But I do still think it's the up‑skilling, even if you have the language skills. Certainly I know we find in migrants in Australia, many arrive without English skills, but they actually, many of them don't have great skills in their own native languages either.
So, if you're illiterate, it's probably a barrier in any language. We spend time focusing on multilingual abilities, but I think it's ‑‑ sorry, of technology, but I think it's also up‑skilling people with digital skills in whatever language they have, as well.
>> RAM MOHAN: Christian.
>> CHRISTIAN DAWSON: As long as I've been coming to IGF, we've been talking about connecting the next billion. We are focusing our attention on how we can connect the unconnected, and there are lots of stakeholders who are doing that and putting efforts into last mile connectivity.
We've spent time here talking about meaningful connectivity, and earlier today, you asked Jen what she thought it would take to add language along with access devices and training into the definition of meaningful connectivity everywhere. What I would really like to do is go out individually to all the stakeholders to have a survey, to actually go to the people that are connecting the unconnected to the last mile, and ask them en masse, try to gather up that information, and then disseminate it. Because all of us then need to take what they are saying they are missing, what they are telling us they are missing, and we need to figure out how we can collectively build those tools.
What I want most is I want direct information from the people that are making it happen now, and for them to tell us how we can make it happen.
>> RAM MOHAN: Toral?
>> TORAL DAFTARY COWIESON: Thank you. Those are hard answers to follow. I don't know what to add. So I want to build off of something that Theresa said, that no one can do this alone. I think, you know, the one key thing is strengthening the work that's already happening across stakeholders. You know, when we think about all the stakeholders who are required NGOs, governments, tech companies, standards, organizations, language communities, and really taking a step back and organizing ourselves kind of clarity around the roles and responsibilities that each of us have in this multilingual internet, and then communicating that effectively.
Because there's so much work. We talked about UNESCO's indigenous international decade of indigenous languages, for example, and all the other initiatives. ICANN's initiatives, for example. How do we bring those together in a way that we can make it clear for how language communities can be engaged?
Because I think we make it so hard. And it's hard to know, all of us have so many things coming at us, how do we make it easier? And then how do we engage and empower those communities to be, again, part of that solution? So, you know, my thoughts are really around our work across stakeholders and the responsibility that we have to one another, to the language communities, and how do we hold ourselves accountable to success?
You know, like Christian said, we've been talking about that next billion for a long time. How are we actually demonstrating that we're bringing that to closure in some way?
Thanks. Great question.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you.
Manal?
>> MANAL ISMAIL: Thank you, Ram. I truly believe that the most significant mindset shift needed from all stakeholders, as we mentioned, across the internet ecosystem, is to treat language equity not as a localization, add‑on that comes as an afterthought, but as a core driver of global, meaningful participation, and a foundational layer of digital infrastructure. I mean, same as connectivity, as cybersecurity.
Accordingly, rather than thinking of linguistic plurality as a challenge that we need to fix, and sometimes by adding translations later or by trying to find workarounds, we all know how IDNs were introduced. And keep it, if there is demand.
I think we need to think of multilingual by design, as Jen also mentioned, as an integral tool, inclusive, scaleable, and ethical digital infrastructure innovation.
We also need conscious and deliberate, maybe national initiatives, like stakeholders, as mentioned, and also the importance of collaboration in that respect. Such initiatives could be government supported, publicly funded, open source based, something that could provide high‑quality language resources to APIs for underrepresented languages.
So instead of making languages chase technology, we need to start making technology serve languages. Thank you, Ram. Back to you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you, Manal. That's a really powerful way to encapsulate what we're trying to do. Technology should be serving languages rather than the other way around.
So let me ask a question. You know, we have here in our panel, we have diverse perspectives, technical perspectives, society, industry, government.
Christian, let me start with you. How can these diverse stakeholders collaborate and coordinate so that we can amplify their impact in promoting linguistic inclusion in digital policies?
>> CHRISTIAN DAWSON: I think we have a lot of people with a lot of good intentions, and a lot of us don't know exactly what it is we need to do to put those good intentions to active good.
There are lots of programs that do active good in here. We'll hear ‑‑ we've heard about some of the active good programs that ICANN has been doing for a long time in this area. One of the things that we are doing with CODI is we're trying to find all the people that are doing active good. We're trying to bring them into a sort of single, you know, coordinating stream where people can talk to one another about things that are going on and raise programs that need to get done.
I think there just needs to be a lot more talking and a lot more organization around all of the efforts that are going on, so that we can centralize them, and surface other ways to help that will get people to be able to raise their hands and say, "Well, that's kind the kind of work I can do. I've been looking for a way to contribute to these efforts. I'm ready."
>> RAM MOHAN: Theresa, what do you think? How can we better coordinate and collaborate among the various stakeholders? If the goal is to have Language as a Pillar of digital inclusion strategies worldwide, what can we do better?
>> THERESA SWINEHART: I think not be shy to pursue ideas. And by that, I mean, different organizations may be engaged ‑‑ I'll just give some examples ‑‑ with educational modules around internet‑related issues or digital‑inclusion related aspects, or how certain things function.
Are there opportunity there is to add on additional modules around language awareness, around internationalized domain names or universal acceptance, or how to build that in?
I think sometimes looking at things in isolation and our own work in isolation, we lose sight of the opportunity that, for somebody who is involved in a, let's say, policy track of education for international relations, let's say by example, it might not make sense to create awareness that there is actually the opportunity to have one's own language online and what that would entail. But a chapter or two in a book that is part of that sets off that awareness.
In a business school, awareness that one actually, from a business standpoint, has a population that could very well be interested in using their own languages. For educational institutions or medical professions, that one serves a population. Many of us when we go to our medical facility, it may say, "If you need somebody to help interpret this, contact this number and we can provide these languages."
Where is that online? Where is that source of the click down? So I think there's ‑‑ we tend to look at either our areas of work in isolation or our sectors in isolation, and we need to do what we can to help connect the dots. In those dots, what are the opportunities? What are the tools in the toolbox for different sectors, different organizations to fully serve a population that is not only speaking with Roman character sets, by example, from a technical standpoint, but is speaking so many different languages, and some of them are written in oral. And how does one go to serve them?
It's a big task, but I would say if each of us walked away today and said, "Here are the two things I'm going to follow up on, and the two people I know in wherever it might be, I'll contact and say, Hey, did you know," it could go a long way.
>> RAM MOHAN: Jen, what mechanisms are missing or need strengthening when we look at collaboration and coordination?
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: I think both Christian and Theresa have actually hit on a lot of these points. Toral, as well, when she mentioned, you know, you can't go it ago.
Missing things still, I mean, just filling in the gaps, I think, is what it is. Theresa's last call, you know, for action is really personal for all of us here at the table and those in the room, as well. Making that connection, making that, connecting the two dots, understanding that, you know, each of the organizations, DotAsia, of course, we have a lot of work that we do in IDNs, and we do a lot of work in capacity building, but in the act of doing all these things, we come across different organizations also in the region that can help us with these effort, especially when we're looking at CODI.
You know, connecting good things that people are doing and allowing them to do it together. Again, I mean, the answer is the same thing. Filling in the gaps in the way we know how. I think that is what it is missing, and that really takes a collective effort.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much.
So let me turn to you, Manal, with a different question. So we've been talking here about, you know, the principles of linguistic diversity and multilingual by design. So how can these principles become more explicitly embedded into digital rights frameworks and more embedded in governance discussions?
>> MANAL ISMAIL: Thank you, Ram. Can you hear me?
Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, this could be extended in laws and regulations that already support disabilities, and this could be also a part of laws and regulations, expanding the digital accessibility laws and regulations to explicitly include language accessibility on all sides, disabilities.
Also, through the regulatory and approaches we've mentioned and incentives that could be done, as well. And I believe, also, as everyone mentioned, it's a multistakeholder thing, and it's also, as a special characteristic that we need to work on the supply and demand side at the same time.
As some have already mentioned, even the demand side, they don't know they can have this service, so they see everything in Latin, English, or whatever dominant languages, and they don't know that this luxury is even possible.
On the other side, the supply side, they don't see it visible from a business point of view. So we need to work on awaring the demand side and triggering the supply side at the same time, and maybe governments can help with national initiatives, help with government support or public funds.
And, lastly, also connecting the dots and making sure that we are all pushing in the same direction as everyone else mentioned. I think one good thing about the universal acceptance, global day that we can learn from, it started globally and now it is connecting with on the ground, national activities, which I think is one thing that we can also follow when we talk about really multilingual and digital future.
Thank you, Ram.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thanks, Manal.
Let's go to getting questions and really an interaction with the audience. Let's start online, Christian.
>> CHRISTIAN DAWSON: Sure. We do have one question in the chat. Feel free if you're in the chat to add others, and we'll also welcome people to come to the mics, as well. Going to the queue next? Fantastic.
Question from Nicholas Fiumarelli, how can countries accelerate IDN compliance and readiness in the light these measures are not advancing from year to year at the same pace as other adoptions, such as RPKI validation enabled networks or DNS SECT deployment. What can be alternatives, other than law enforcement, on the topic?
I'll read the rest. We're having a fragmentation of languages due to this. Some efforts from UASG to reach software owners, messaging apps, among others, but how can local chapters help? Do you have examples of soft enforcement for UA readiness? UA is also part of the UNESCO ROAM‑X framework.
Anybody on the panel like to take this?
>> RAM MOHAN: I think Theresa may be closest to respond to that question.
Christian, there were several questions in there. Let's skip to one thing that perhaps ‑‑
>> CHRISTIAN DAWSON: There were. Let's see, let's focus in on the idea of soft enforcement for UA readiness. How can countries accelerate IDN compliance and readiness with soft enforcement mechanisms?
>> THERESA SWINEHART: There are many ways, and we saw efforts with IPV6 at different points. I think there's soft ways to do it through the education system and the next generation. Through the schools and the opportunities to both create awareness and also require some of the digital engagement is done through the use of centralized domain names or universally accepted tools. And work with the Technical Community in order to make sure the schools have that capacity.
That creates awareness for the next generation, which is essential if we want to actually preserve languages moving forward. Maybe it's also soft ways through requirements of medical facilities or government social facilities that are providing to their citizens, that government agencies themselves look to have those mechanisms put into place and work with providing that for their citizens in their languages.
Many countries have multiple languages, and then they have indigenous languages, as well, that they could serve. I think leading by example is essential, that if one wants to actually have this resonate, one has to lead by example around that. I think there's other ways in context of the private sector.
Maybe this one's procurement policy may suggest one would encourage the use of that, and if not, to be willing to help to figure out how different agencies could do that or different bidders could do that.
So I think that there's many, many different ways to build it into one's own effort, but part of it is walking the talk and leading by example. I think that's an important fundamental step around that.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you.
Jen?
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: I don't know if I like the, I guess, the phrase soft enforcement, but, really, I think we're looking at incentivizing, especially looking at industry.
I think a lot of, you know, registries, registrars, we are incentivized to do this in internal systems, as well.
I want to pick up on something Theresa mentioned. Not so much, again, soft enforcement, but the incentivizing. I think Manal also touched on it when she mentioned tax incentives, tax breaks. Putting it, requiring it in the procurement process in stages, where you first, you know, prioritize those contracts that do have this, and, finally, you know, in the end, you know, this would become a requirement.
Then including the requirement of reporting of UA readiness intenders. I think that combined would have the effect that I think the answer was looking for, yeah.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you, Jen.
Let's go to the gentleman here.
>> Thank you. This is Mohammad Abdul Haque Anu, or everybody call Anu. I'm the Secretary‑General of Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum.
With the Internet Governance Forum, actively organizing universal acceptance day event for the last three years. With a special focus on the Bangla language, I truly welcome this discussion on language inclusion. Bridging the Digital Divide is not only about infrastructure, it is about ensuring every community can access the internet in their own language.
In Bangladesh, our efforts to promote UA and local script adoption have shown that digital inclusion becomes meaningful when people can use technology in their native language. Bangladesh is spoken by over 250 million people, and it faces challenges in full UA readiness.
Global treatment of language inclusion should be a digital right to invest in technical and policy framework that supports meaningful internet access in multilingual access, also.
Also, challenges meaningful internet connectivity, especially rural areas. Thank you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much for your thoughtful intervention. Appreciate it.
Let's take another question from the audience there.
>> Hello. My name is Gabriel, and I have a question regarding implementation. For someone wanting to implement a website in their own language, it's often not ‑‑ you would get into trouble with, for example, font rendering, not displaying it properly, or the font not having support. When you get into other accessibility things, like screen readers, even those are mandated, they might not have support for that language.
So my question is then, how do you ensure that the underlying tools people are using to build websites are accessible to these languages, and so that other people who are educators or bloggers can make websites in their own languages without having to have deep knowledge about how all these things, about font rendering or technology works. Thank you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much.
I think, Toral, that's adjacent to some of the core things you are doing, so perhaps you want to take that?
>> TORAL DAFTARY COWIESON: It's a great question. I'll give an example. I was recently working with a designer on some stickers or something, and we were using, let's say, the spaceship emoji. What are the different languages in which you could search for that?
We put it into one tool, I'm not going to say which organization, and we were getting a lot of tofus, right, little squares with just nothing that was useful. Then I said, "Let me try it in Canva."
I put the same block of information in Canva, and everything rendered correctly. What that told me is that Canva had Unicode in its technical stack, technology stack. What was different about how Canva was approaching it, their products are built to be world ready. Canva is not a Unicode member, so let me put that out there, but it really depends on what tools you're using and if Unicode is in the tech stack, that'll make it easier for your website development to happen.
It's really finding the right tool and not being frustrated that something isn't working the way that you were hoping that it would. But there are solutions that are out there. If Unicode is in the tech stack, that can accelerate the work.
>> RAM MOHAN: Christian, I wonder whether that idea that Toral was just speaking about and what the gentleman was identifying as a real need, maybe one of the kinds of initiatives that might be useful on a global scale.
>> CHRISTIAN DAWSON: I think that's exactly why the organization that we're trying to build is focused on listening. Because identifying where there are gaps is an important thing that we need to be doing, but also where there is effective work that needs to be connected with the people who need to know that it is being done is also a vital tool that needs to be done, as well.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much.
I'll go to the lady there on my right.
>> Hi. My name is Alisa, and I'm with the Committee of Norway. One of the many things we do with language diversity is we support the community that creates and curates Northern Sami Wikipedia. We're sort of the movement behind Wikipedia.
I just thought I'd add a little bit of optimism when it comes to tech and language diversity. Well, what we're seeing now, you mentioned, we should make technology serve languages. I think technology is quite keen to go bilingual, full force. With our encyclopedia in Northern Sami, currently, human traffic is about 12%. Northern Sami is a tiny language. The remaining traffic is bots, spiders, large language models desperately trying to learn Northern Sami, so I think there's hope.
One of the obstacles we're facing with small languages is just the same that we faced when we first started gaining, like, public access, general access to the internet here in Norway in the 1990s. There isn't enough text, quality text and quality data available. So frustratingly, in Northern Sami, in this case, text is available, it's just not available under open licenses, so it is not there to be scraped.
So if you want tech to learn multilingual approaches quickly, we need to make available what we have. That's the first step, and it is a very elementary step that we can easily make. And even public entities don't realize how much of a difference they can make by making their data sets available under open licenses.
So just a small piece of optimism. We can easily do this.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much.
Christian.
>> CHRISTIAN DAWSON: Couple thoughts. First of all, one of the things we have been doing as we've been trying to organize CODI as a movement that we are trying to start in this area is talking to a number of groups who are doing important work in this space. I want to say that the work that Wikipedia foundation and Wikipedia are doing is phenomenal. They're doing incredible things when it comes to language.
In the areas where we are talking about the challenges that are coming because of AI, they're doing it not just in languages, but within cultural context, right? And the things they're doing there are incredibly impressive.
I think that you're right, that open needs to be an important component of what it is we're talking about. Of course, open has its own challenges in the era of LLMs, because large data scraping is a challenge for a lot of people who are designed to be ‑‑ to have open environments.
Yesterday, I joined the kick‑off call for a creative comments program, CC Signals, that is trying to address some of the concerns that people have in the scraping ‑‑ when it comes to scraping in open environments for LLMs. That's an area that we're going to try to connect CODI to.
I encourage everybody to take a look at the efforts happening there, because I agree with you, it is very important and hopeful.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you.
Toral?
>> TORAL DAFTARY COWIESON: Thank you for that positive news there. I just wanted to comment on this notion of open. This is where we've hit some concerns from language communities. That by granting rights, that they are giving up something. That is an ongoing challenge. One of the distinctions that we have been working on as we've been talking with language communities is this open license is the only way for full participation and access for other users.
And being really clear that by licensing, that you are granting licensing, but you're not giving up. You still retain ownership. I think that distinction, as clear as we can make it, and I've had to work with our general council on this a bit because it can be very easy to get deep into the legalese, and I think it frightens and scares off language communities, rightfully so, and just raises some huge concerns.
The open license piece is a huge step towards access.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you.
We have another question from the audience on my left.
>> Yes. Individual users. This is not really a question but a comment or contribution on the question, what can we do to improve multilingualism?
I think that I agree completely with what has been said, that we need a paradigm shift. We have really a cultural problem with this. There's something that is now ‑‑ that you are subject to this particular mentality. We behave in a way that I would call the syndrome of animal farm, in the sense that we all say, okay, all languages are equal, but then in practice, we behave as if we have one language that is more equal than the others.
Let me make an example. In a lot of meetings, we have interpretation. Also here in domain room at ICANN meetings, we have several situations in which we have interpretation. And the situation is more often than not that the panel consistently speaks in English. And the interpretation is used by people in the audience to understand, to listen in their own language.
Just randomly, there is a question from the audience in a different language, and then maybe somebody from the panel, as a courtesy, replies in that language. But why can't we establish the rule, the behavior, that when we have interpretation in your language, one of the interpreted languages, why don't you speak in your own language or in the language that you are more comfortable with than in English?
I think that this cultural change is done like every cultural change, by little steps. We don't need huge changes, but just make the people think that there are more languages. This will not achieve the 7,000 languages having same status over the internet, but at least we can start moving slowly in that direction.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much. In many ways, I think especially with the advent of large language models and artificial intelligence engines, we're quickly moving to a path where we may end up having one language to rule them all rather than the diversity of languages that really represents the world around us.
So thank you so much. I'm going to ask each of the panelists one sentence that sums up what you want to provide to our audience as a takeaway, but only one sentence.
Let me start with you, Sophie.
>> SOPHIE MITCHELL: Ram, that's unfair. I'm still ruminating on the question from the last gentleman about animal farm. I almost want my one overarching thought to be, let's not be animal farm. Let's ensure that all languages are equal.
But I think ‑‑ am I allowed one more? Sorry, Ram. I'm already breaking your rule.
>> RAM MOHAN: Please, go ahead.
>> SOPHIE MITCHELL: I was just going to say, it's such a multifaceted issue, and it requires a multistakeholder response. I think if we start quantifying the benefits for people, then we might be able to see better unification and unified action. I'd love to see that.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you.
Toral, one sentence?
>> TORAL DAFTARY COWIESON: We can only be successful together.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you.
Manal?
>> MANAL ISMAIL: We need to all continue working on the supply and demand side together. Multilingual by design, not an afterthought. Thank you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you.
Jen?
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: It's absolutely a language justice movement. Again, repeating multilingual first and UA by design.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you.
Theresa?
>> THERESA SWINEHART: Lead by example, and connect everybody to change this.
>> RAM MOHAN: Last word, Christian.
>> CHRISTIAN DAWSON: My sentence is, there are CODI postcards on the corner table over there. You should grab one, and let's do more together than we can apart.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much.
That concludes this session.