In News

The latest set of emojis have been released and this time, they are embracing inclusivity with emojis depicting a range of disabilities, as well as different genders and skin colours - about time we say! 

The Unicode Consortium recently released the list of new emoji for 2019, responding to requests for inclusivity.  When Apple released 70 new emoji in October, it said it was working with Unicode to “add more disability-themed emoji to the keyboard for Unicode 12.0,” and it seems that collaboration has paid off. Unicode has now announced 59 completely new emoji, and among them are a deaf person, a mechanical leg, a man using a probing cane and a woman using a probing cane, and other things related to accessibility. Responding to a person using a wheelchair as a top request in 2018, Unicode created new emoji both for people using a manual wheelchair and a motorised wheelchair.

Besides the 59 new emoji, Unicode also released 171 options for gender and skin tone in various emoji. Mixed skin tones are now available for the men holding hands and women holding hands emoji, with over a dozen combinations. Mixed skin tones are also available for a new gender-neutral couple holding-hands emoji Unicode introduced simply called “people holding hands.”

Many people took to Twitter to show how happy they were to see the increasing representation in the emoji keyboard, making it so they can finally represent themselves and their lives accurately in the ideograms that make up a significant part of online communication. 

These new emojis are expected to arrive in the Spring. 

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