The organization that supports .ca domain addresses is allowing Canadians to register a website in both of the country's official languages.

On Sunday, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority added 16 new characters that can now be used to create a .ca domain in French for the first time.

In a statement on the CIRA website, the organization says the process was complex because of the variations in characters for some domain names, and a number of procedures have been enacted to help the problem.

A website domain such as préside.ca, CIRA said, could have 62 possible variations.

To reflect the change, current owners of .ca domain names have been granted exclusive rights to incorporate the new characters into their domain names but are not required to do so.