Emojis to get more diverse

NEW emojis depicting characters wearing hijabs, breast-feeding and with beards have been proposed for use by cellphone makers, reflecting a growing diversity in the colourful icons.

The new emojis are likely to arrive on smartphones next year after Unicode, the international consortium that sets their global standards, proposed the 51 icons.

It will take the total number of the cartoon images, which are increasingly being used to replace words in text messages, to 1 724.

Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old from Germany, had campaigned for the inclusion of the character wearing a hijab, proposing it to Unicode after realising there was no emoji to represent her.

Among the list of introductions are “person with headscarf”, “breastfeeding”, “bearded person” and “older adult”, reflecting the lack of grandparent icons.

The new list adds to efforts to make emojis more diverse.

Smartphone makers have included a variety of skin tones, hair colours and cultural and religious references in recent years following claims that they reinforce stereotypes.

Google recently called for more emojis that reflect women in the workplace.

Apple added male and female versions of some emojis after complaints that many of the female-focused cartoons featured activities such as cutting hair or performing as “Playboy bunnies”. – The Telegraph