New emoji: Apple reveals inclusive new disability and skin tone options

Updates also include new food, animals and activities

Andrew Griffin
Wednesday 17 July 2019 09:56 BST
Comments
Apple senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi displays a sampling of new Memoji avatars at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference
Apple senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi displays a sampling of new Memoji avatars at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage)

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Apple has revealed a host of new emoji, including far more inclusive options that allow a variety of different people to be represented.

Perhaps the most significant change in the new emoji are new features that almost change how the small characters work. Following on from the option to choose the skin tone of the characters, users will now be able to select different combinations of skin tones.

That means that the emoji intended to represent relationships – the two people of different genders holding hands – can each be changed up to ensure they look more like the people they represent. It allows for more than 75 possible combinations of different skin tones, Apple said.

The company also revealed a set of new disability-themed emoji, which include a new guide dog, an ear with a hearing aid, wheelchairs and a prosthetic arm and leg. "Celebrating diversity in all its many forms is integral to Apple’s values and these new options help fill a significant gap in the emoji keyboard," Apple claimed in a release.

Apple had lobbied with the Unicode Consortium to allow those emoji to come to the keyboard. Though Apple designs the little images itself, what they are is decided by a group of different technology companies to ensure the images look similar across platforms – so adding new ones can be a long and bureaucratic process.

In addition to those emoji focused on diversity and inclusion, a host of other updates focused on new food, animals and activities have also been added.

They include a new smiley face to indicate yawns, and a one-piece swim suit. There are new kinds of food (such as waffles, falafel, butter and garlic) as well as new animals (including a sltoh, flamingo, orangutan and skunk).

In all there will be 59 new emoji designs that will arrive in the autumn. They will come through a software update that will be available across Apple's platforms.

Other services will probably roll out similar new designs around the same time, in accordance with new updates from the Unicode consortium.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in