Although the iconic yellow smiley face will always be a representative symbol of the famous emojis family, we’ve come a long way when it comes to the symbols designed to add visual flair to text-based messages. Emojis have become a way for people to express their identity, but this year is the year where smartphones around the world are about to become much more inclusive.
Inter-racial couples, a guide dog, and a woman in a wheelchair are some of the latest crop of emojis to be released this year.
The Unicode Consortium, the non-profit organization that manages the world’s emoji standards, announced the list of 59 new images this week, as well as 171 variants for gender and skin tone.
Focusing more on the disability side, emojis devoted to disabled individuals were proposed by Apple to better represent individuals with disabilities.
“One in seven people around the world has some form of disability,” Apple wrote in its proposal. “Adding emoji emblematic to users’ life experiences helps foster a diverse culture that is inclusive of disability.”
Apple developed the proposed emojis in collaboration with the American Council of the Blind and the National Association of the Deaf, among other organizations.
Inclusive characters to reflect couples’ different races and genders under the “people holding hands” emoji will also allow users mix and match different skin tones and genders, with 171 possible combinations.
Additionally, following a campaign by girls’ rights charity Plan International, there will be a menstruation-themed emoji — a “drop of blood” icon. Another upcoming emoji has sparked an online debate about the uses of the “pinching hand symbol” which many people believe will be used to reference a (very small) particular male body part.
Are you excited for all the new emojis to come?
By: Maytinee Kramer
