In a submission to the Unicode Consortium today, Apple has proposed a suite of new emojis that will “better represent individuals with disabilities.”
New emojis proposed include a guide dog, hearing aid, prosthetic limbs, as well as people using canes and different types of wheelchairs.
Apple notes that this is “not meant to be a comprehensive list of all possibile depictions of disabiliites” and goes on to explain that this is intended as “an initial starting point”.
Working with American Council of the Blind, the Cerebral Palsy Foundation and the National Association of the Deaf, Apple’s submission to Unicode covers more detail about the background of this proposal.
In total there are 13 new emojis proposed when options for men and women are taken into account, or 45 in total when also including the options for skin tones.
The next Unicode Technical Committee meeting sits next month at Adobe Headquarters in San Jose. If approved, these characters would be shortlisted for potential inclusion in Emoji 12.0 which comes out in the first half of 2019.
Apple Submission to Unicode
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