The Unicode Consortium, the group in charge of the way emojis work on computers and device, proposed an update on Tuesday that might finally fix the emoji diversity problem.
The proposed draft comes from Mark Davis and Peter Edberg. In the draft they describe a need for people all over the world to be able to see themselves represented in emojis.
"People all over the world want to have emoji that reflect more human diversity, especially for skin tone. 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 (inhuman) appearance, such as a yellow/orange color or a silhouette.
Unicode Version 8.0 is adding 5 symbol modifier characters that provide for a range of skin tones for human emoji. These characters are based on the six tones of the Fitzpatrick scale, a recognized standard for dermatology."
The proposed update would allow five different skin tones. There is no timetable for when this would be implemented, but Unicode 8.0 will be released in 2015 and could possibly include an emoji update.
It would give users six different possible skin tones for all of the emoji faces.
The draft also notes that there are many types of diversity in human appearance besides skin tone, but it's beyond the scope of Unicode to "provide an encoding-based mechanism for representing every aspect of human appearance."
So while there's no concrete timetable for more diverse emojis, at least there's something in the works because people definitely want them...
Off ALL the emojis "✊" this one should def be black
a black heart emoji is seriously needed
The inventor of emojis is a racist. I want black emojis. For my black self and my black iPhone.
so why arent there black emojis?
Emojis got like 30 different laughing faces but not one black guy