Diversity finally comes to emojis as Apple puts forward a new update for its emoji icons, including tiny cartoon people that have been made available in various skin tones.
These emojis will include both male and female faces along with thumbs up and thumbs down icons, all of which will have more diverse options. Even princesses, construction workers and other people emoji will be available in different skin-tone variations. To simply tap and hold on an emoji person will enable the user to view the various skin-tone options.
According to CNN, these racially diverse people are only a few of the 300 new emojis that are included in the iOS 8.3’s developer version. However, these new icons will only be made available to the public when the update is officially released later this year.
Last March, Apple announced its commitment to contribute to the increasing diversity of its emoji keyboard following the petition at DoSomething.org which collected thousands of signatures worldwide.
Even pop star Miley Cyrus posted on Twitter and made the emoji-diversity issue a trending tropic.
To address the public’s uproar about the company having limited options when it comes to representing diversity, the tech giant went on to work on icons that represent people of different color.
In the current emoji keyboard, several racial representations can be found including a traditional Chinese-looking man and an Indian man wearing a turban. However, the rest of the emoji community shows more people of light skin color.
Illustrated icons are drawn out from Unicode, known as the standard for emojis, text and numbers across different platforms. In generating the extended version of diverse emojis, Unicode made use of the Fitzpatrick scale, which was first created by dermatologists to distinguish different skin types.
"Apple supports and cares deeply about diversity, and is working with The Unicode Consortium to update the standard so that it better represents diversity for all of us," an Apple spokesperson stated.
Apple will also reportedly include 32 new country flags along with a wider range of family icons. The company will ensure that the redesigned phone emoji will go well with the iPhone 6 and new iOS style.
