Malcolm Owen
The final list of new emoji that will be added to the roster in "iOS 13" and "macOS 10.15" in 2019 has been decided upon by the Unicode Consortium, with the 230 messaging icons including some proposed by Apple depicting disabilities.
The sixth major refresh of the emoji collection since its creation, the list of new additions in fact consists of 59 unique new emoji symbols. The roster also includes 171 variants for gender and skintone, bringing the full number available to 230.
The vast variety of symbols with significant numbers of variations are those depicting people, with those under the "person-activity" and "family" list making up the majority of the additions, images compiled by Emojipedia reveal.
The former category includes a number of disability-related emoji, including women and men in manual and motorized wheelchairs, as well as those with a probing cane. The inclusion of these symbols was made at the suggestion of Apple in March 2018, along with other symbols including mechanical arms and legs, an ear with a hearing aid, and a gesture-related one identified as "deaf person." Lower down the list, related entries for guide dog and service dog are also available for use.
The "family" section consists of four versions of people holding hands, including pairings of a woman and man, two women, two men, and two people.
Other notable additions include multiple modes of transport, a hindu temple, assorted food and drinks including waffles and juice boxes, assorted swimwear, and a selection of geometric shapes.
The emoji have been decided upon after multiple revisions by the Unicode Consortium, which anticipates the new images to appear in mobile operating system updates this fall. Given the timing, it is likely that Apple will include them as part of the update to iOS 13 at around that time.
Christine McKee
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25 Comments
Ok, so the lemur is cute, but honestly, do we really need 230 emojis? Being generous, I think I've used maybe 30 total, and 15 or 20 on a regular basis, and I can't say I've received many more from other people. When I scroll through the pages upon pages of emojis on my iPhone, I can't imagine ever using the vast majority of them.
Two ridiculous things:
1. That it takes an entire iOS release to add emojis.
2. That people have been encouraged to feel so victimised that we can no longer generalise and be content with it. ‘There isn’t a multi-skin coloured emoji with purple and green hair and 4 fingers on the left hand?! That’s discrimination and racism by white men!’
iOS 14 will have 14 hundred more emojis, and that’s all iOS annual upgrade can do? You must be kidding.
Articles like this one are obviously snarkbait, but I do have to wonder what the end-game is with emoji-as-a-communication-mechanism. Is the end game for emoji intended to be some sort of hieroglyphic code, a spoken- and written-language neutral way to convey information graphically? Or is it just an uncontrolled profusion of too many people trying to be too cute with tiny cartoons? The existence of a consortium investing real time, money, and resources on emoji standardization makes me think there is more to this than what meets the eye.
The emoji thing is a runaway train on fast track to becoming a wreck.
It’s a solution in search of a problem, a sign of ridiculous linguistic impoverishment.
Can anyone still meaningfully communicate facts and emotions? Or are we down to a five hundred word vocabulary accompanied by an endless number of basic emojis and their politically correct permutations of gender, skin color, head gear, and disabilities?
And where are the emojis for people with a bigger brain? Are they discriminated against?