Where are those new emojis we’ve been promised? It seems like ages ago when we first heard a new batch of the tiny-but-vital illustrations were coming, but they’ve yet to materialise.
Well, they are on their way and will appear in phases throughout 2015, says the Unicode Consortium which is the non-profit organisation that sets global standards for emoji characters. Yes, there is a nonprofit that determines which emojis will make the cut as well as those that will not.
Unicode, then, is the reason we don’t have a glass of champagne, a hot dog or anything more phallic than an aubergine. So, blame them.
The current selection of characters that appear on your keypad came to be after a series of ‘accidents’, and were chosen based on their popularity in Japan.
The consortium put forth a proposal this week aimed at increasing diversity – namely the skin tone – in the emoji characters,
‘People all over the world want to have emoji that reflect more human diversity, especially for skin tone,’ the proposal reads. ‘The Unicode emoji characters for people and body parts are meant to be generic, yet following the precedents set by the original Japanese carrier images, they are often shown with a light skin tone instead of a more generic (nonhuman) appearance, such as a yellow/orange color or a silhouette.
‘Five symbol modifier characters that provide for a range of skin tones for human emoji are planned for Unicode Version 8.0 (scheduled for mid-2015). These characters are based on the six tones of the Fitzpatrick scale, a recognised standard for dermatology.’
The company acknowledges the need to include more than just variants in skin tone but says there’s just no way to have an emoji for every body shape, facial hair, hairstyle, etc, stating: ‘There are many other types of diversity in human appearance besides different skin tones: different hair styles and color, use of eyeglasses, various kinds of facial hair, different body shapes, different headwear, and so on.
‘It is beyond the scope of Unicode to provide an encoding-based mechanism for representing every aspect of human appearance diversity that emoji users might want to indicate.’
We’re just glad the new characters are coming soon. In addition to something that reflects man-parts better than an aubergine, we would also like to request a simple pair of sunglasses. If you’re reading this, Unicode people, we would be much obliged.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.