In June 2011, the IPA Council received a formal request from William Barry and Jürgen Trouvain to vote on the adoption of a standard IPA symbol for the central open (unrounded) vowel. This request followed publication in 2008, in JIPA 38(3), of their paper ‘Do we need a symbol for a central open vowel?’, along with response papers in JIPA 39(2) by Daniel Recasens and Martin Ball, and a further response from Barry and Trouvain, in JIPA 39(3).

The Council debated the issue by e-mail in 2011 and took a vote in June–July 2011. That vote was positive but not conclusive: with only 15 of 30 members voting, the vote was 8 in favor, 7 against. The Executive then decided to bring the issue again to the new Council that would begin its term in August, in hopes of a more decisive vote. Thus, in Fall 2011 discussion was re-opened, and after extensive discussion the following resolution, deemed most likely of all the options that had been discussed to be supported, was put to the Council for a vote in December 2011:

With all 30 members of the Council voting this time, the resolution was defeated: 17 no, 12 yes, and 1 abstention. The IPA will therefore not be adding a symbol for this vowel to the alphabet or chart. No further resolutions were proposed to follow up on this issue at this time.