The Unicode Consortium has announced that 59 new emoji will make it into the sixth major update to the official roster of emoji. With another 171 variants for gender and skin tones, that means a total of 230 new emoji will be coming to your phone by the second half of the year. What’s significant about this latest batch is its focus on disabilities and gender-related experiences.
Included among this release are emoji for hearing aids, manual and motorized wheelchairs, prosthetic legs and arms, white “probing” canes used by the blind and vision impaired, service dogs, and guide dogs. This latest batch of emoji will also see one representing a woman’s period. The menstruation emoji was one fought for by Plan International U.K., a girls’ rights charity that held an online vote for what such an emoji should look like, reports the BBC.
While the vote decided menstruation should be represented with an emoji that was a pair of underwear marked with blood, that idea was rejected by the Unicode Consortium. Instead, the new menstruation emoji will take the form of a single drop of blood, an alternative Plan International U.K. supports.
In addition, new emoji in the latest batch include a yawning face, a person kneeling, a sloth, an otter, an orangutan, a skunk, a flamingo, garlic, a waffle, a falafel, a Hindu temple, ballet shoes, a diya lamp, and more.
Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the early-rate deadline, May 3.
