An individual sitting in a wheelchair, a hearing aid, a person with a white cane and a person signing – these are some of the emojis that were proposed by Apple in March 2018 to the Unicode Consortium, the organization that adopts standards for emoji. These have now been added to the list of forthcoming emoji in the iOS update 13 which will be out later this year.
To come up with the approved emoji, Apple collaborated with organizations like Cerebral Palsy Foundation, the National Association of the Deaf and the American Council of the Blind.
While the proposal has been made by Apple, how these emojis will finally look depends on the users service and device. The list can be viewed here – https://unicode.org/emoji/charts-12.0/emoji-released.html
While the news of these new emojis have gathered mix reactions worldwide, disability rights campaigners are mostly happy about the representation of disabled people.
