Apple Planning to Add More Diversity to Emoji Character Set

Apple has plans to expand its emoji set to include emojis that are non-caucasian, according to Apple’s vice president of worldwide corporate communications, Katie Cotton, who spoke to MTV Act (via The Verge). The company says it is working with the Unicode Consortium to add more characters to its emoji offerings.

emoji

"Tim forwarded your email to me. We agree with you. Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms. There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard."

After originating in Japan, emoji were incorporated into Unicode, which allowed them to be used on multiple platforms. The character set has largely featured caucasian icons, however, which Apple aims to change.

Apple's last change to emojis came with iOS 6, when the company added additional characters and made emoji accessible to all users. Previously, special apps were required to access emoji on iOS. iOS 7, released in late 2013, did not include any new emoji, but it is possible Apple could make some changes to the characters with iOS 8 later this year.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Emoji

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Top Rated Comments

penplotter Avatar
147 months ago
Cork asian; an Irish Indian :p

Better not upset the PC crowd - better create smileys for EVERY civilisation, if this is to be taken seriously, or there'll be a riot at PC-correctness towers.

Score: 52 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kmj2318 Avatar
147 months ago
Being white, predictably, I didn't recognize the lack of diversity.
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Zaqfalcon Avatar
147 months ago
Not enough cats.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Renzatic Avatar
147 months ago
Jesus, people. Really? How the hell does a thread about the Emoji set get sent down to PRSI? Are we really that damn obnoxious?
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cocky jeremy Avatar
147 months ago
We don't need more races, we need more yellow faces and animals!
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
FakeWozniak Avatar
147 months ago
There's a standards body responsible for emoji!!!! :confused:
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)