New Emoji in 2019 Likely to be More Inclusive For Interracial and Same-Sex Couples

Aug. 11, 2018

It has barely been a few weeks since157 new emojiswere announced as part of Unicode 11, but many more are apparently in store for Unicode 12. Earlier reports had suggested that aHindu Temple emojiwas one of the candidates that were included in the draft by the Unicode Consortium, andthe latest listnow adds 61 new options to the mix.

The new list embraces diversity in all forms, and alongside the aforementioned Hindu Temple, includes an emoji for a deaf person, an illustration of an ear with a hearing aid, a sari, a service dog, a motorized and manual wheelchair. Many of these‘accessibility emojis’including those of the service dog, the wheelchairs etc.were proposed by Appleearlier this year.

Also proposed were 55 new combinations of gender and skin color to depict interracial and same-sex couples. Apparently, the different combinations will be achieved with a new emoji called“standing person”, which will allow users to combine two different ‘standing person’ emojis to form a new one to depict a couple.

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