Unicode Emoji 12.0 Beta Hosts 236 Draft Candidates, While Apple Focuses on Diversity

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posted on 6 years ago — updated on 1 second ago

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The new emojis should be ready for release by March next year, though it may be longer before you get these on your phone

It is the Unicode Consortium’s job to maintain and publish the standards on which new emojis are made. Considering how emojis have become a language of communication, particularly on smartphones and instant messenger apps, they gain more importance now than ever before. This time around, the Unicode Consortium has confirmed that there are 236 draft candidates in place for the Emoji 12.0 beta package. At the same time, Apple is working on the new emojis for next year, even as it prepares to ship the Emoji 11 update for this year with the upcoming iOS 12.1 software for iPhones and iPads.

The Unicode Consortium’s Emoji 12.0 Beta focuses on new emojis that illustrate human disabilities, such as a human ear which is wearing a hearing aid, male and female emojis signifying hearing disabilities, communicating with sign language, a male and female with a cane, a male and female in a wheelchair and a guide dog, for instance. At present, Apple, Google, Facebook, Adobe, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, Netflix, Oracle, SAP and Shopify are some of the consortium members.

The 236 draft candidates for Emoji 12.0 include 209 emojis related to people, 7 related to animals and nature, 6 new emojis for travel and 15 emojis for objects, among others. It is expected that Emoji 12.0 will roll out for use by software developers in March. It may be some time before phone makers and app companies including Apple, Google and Samsung actually deploy these new emojis. It is expected that Apple will integrate these in next year’s iOS 13 update, which should be unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with the final release for all users later in the year.

Apple on its part is had proposed the disability and accessibility emojis for Emoji 12.0 Beta. The company will also focus on including gender and skin tone combinations.

The final deliberations and decisions about what eventually makes it to the final Emoji 12.0 release will be made at the next Unicode Technical Committee meeting January 2019, and the release process will be completed by March 2019.

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