Update on the IANA Transition – Privatization Of The Internet

Lawrence E. Strickling, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator, August 16, 2016
For the last 18 years, the United States has been working with the global Internet multistakeholder community to establish a stable and secure multistakeholder model of Internet governance that ensures that the private sector, not governments, takes the lead in setting the future direction of the Internet’s domain name system. To help achieve this goal, NTIA in 1998 partnered with ICANN, a California-based nonprofit, to transition technical DNS coordination and management functions to the private sector. NTIA’s current stewardship role was intended to be temporary. The United States Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) remains committed to preserving a stable and secure Internet Domain Name System (DNS). But what does this effort to privatize the Internet domain name system (DNS) mean for blind Canadians that depend upon accessible digital communications?
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is the member-driven organization that manages Canada’s .CA domain name registry, develops and implements policies that support Canada’s Internet community, and represents the .CA registry internationally, but has no accessibility strategy to govern the .ca ecosystem.