Apple has presented before the Unicode office, which decides in this case which emojis become a standard, the first emojis on accessibility “better represent individuals with disabilities,” according to the proposal.
Perhaps it is the push of the past winter Paralympic games or that it was simply something that was due to many people, but finally there will be emojis of people in wheelchairs, blind or symbols that indicate robotic arms, among others.
“Apple asks for the inclusion of new emojis to represent individuals with disabilities. At present, emojis offer a wide range of options, but they may not represent the experiences of people with disabilities,” Apple writers write in the proposal document.
In total, these would be the new emojis that want to become standards.
- Guide dog with harness
- Person with white cane
- Ear with hearing aid
- Deaf sign
- Person with a mechanized wheelchair
- Person in a manual wheelchair
- Mechanical or prosthetic arm and leg
- Service dog with vest and leash
Now it is Unicode who has to decide if these emojis become a standard or if they need modifications, even add more. What is clear is that Apple will add them in a future version of iOS.
There were initially 176 emojis, which were released in 1999. Now there are 1,182 emojis recognized by the Unicode Consortium. And as a testament to their popularity, the word “emoji” was added to Dictionary.com earlier this year.
Very interesting to me. This is great addition, let them even add mental illness too.