Bangkok, 3 July 2018 – Microsoft Thailand, today, announced support for email addresses in Thai languages across its email apps and services, including Office 365, Outlook 2016, Outlook.com, Exchange Online and Exchange Online Protection (EOP). For the first time, users will be able to use Thai language email addresses for Outlook accounts on PCs, e.g., สมชาย@อินโฟไทยแลนด์.คอม
As part of Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to support Email Address Internationalization (EAI) across its products ad services eco-system and make technology accessible in local languages, this initiative will enable users to seamlessly send/receive mails to/from Thai email addresses via Outlook client on PCs, outlook.com in addition to Outlook apps for Android and IOS.
“Enabling technology in the language of people makes it accessible and beneficial for all Thais, and trully ensures that not a single person is left behind as it removes the need to first learn English – the traditional language of technology. We believe that breaking down the language barrier is crucial for Thailand’s seamless progress towards the digital future as it makes communications and collaboration so much easier, and gives the power of technology to all Thais,” said Ome Sivadith, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Thailand.
Users can register Thai language email addresses from third party EAI address providers THNIC https://thdomain.thnic.co.th through a simple online process.
Additionally, Microsoft announced it’s adding Thai Sarabun New, the national font of Thailand used across government and private institutions, into Windows 10 standard font package starting from now on.
Creating a more inclusive web
According to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), there were 2.9 billion internet users worldwide in 2014, and this number is expected to grow past 5 billion by 2020 and majority of these future users will be coming from non-English speaking countries, many of them will struggle to fully utilize a web if it continues to be dominated by English. Integrating local language email addresses in popular Microsoft products will help make the web experience more inclusive for everyone.
Microsoft, a member of Universal Acceptance Steering Group (USAG) along with international partners including is working to support email addresses in any Unicode script through its apps and services, including RTL (right to left) languages such as Urdu and Arabic.