Canadians could soon be seeing accented characters in .CA domain names if the company that regulates their use gets their way.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is asking its members for input on the implementation of French character Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) at the second level (to the left of the dot).
IDNs contain characters other than a-z, 0-9 or hyphens. CIRA wants to implement the following characters into domains: é, ë, ê, è, à, â, ô, ù, û, ü, ç î and ï.
That means domains like préside.ca, grâce.ca, etc. would be possible using the special characters.
CIRA has opened up a public consultation to get feedback on the idea. You can share your thoughts at IDNConsultation.ca.
On Thursday, we mentioned CIRA’s plans on Twitter. Here’s what a few people had to say:
@ChrisDca How are those of us without bilingual keyboards supposed to visit those domains?
— Adam Lerner (@mradamlerner) September 22, 2011
@ChrisDca why make people jump through hoops to get to your page. Qc likely only market interested.
— Sébastien Perth (@sebastienperth) September 22, 2011
@ChrisDca Heh. “How to guarantee that no one will ever type your URL into their browser.”
— Sarah Braun (@WinnipegEats) September 22, 2011
