Apple is a company that prides itself on its inclusiveness and part of their latest effort is to ensure that people with disabilities are represented when it comes to emojis. The company has recently proposed 13 new emojis that are meant to represent people who have a variety of disabilities.This includes people who might have hearing disabilities where a proposed emoji has been designed to indicate that the user is deaf or might be wearing a hearing aid. There are also emojis where people are walking with a cane, people in wheelchairs, a service dog, and so on. All of these new emojis have been presented in a letter to the Unicode Consortium and according to Apple, they worked with various organizations that represent people with disabilities.
This includes the American Council of the Blind, Cerebral Palsy Foundation and National Association for the Deaf. According to Apple, “Adding emoji emblematic to users’ life experiences helps foster a diverse culture that is inclusive of disability. Emoji are a universal language and a powerful tool for communication, as well as a form of self-expression, and can be used not only to represent one’s own personal experience, but also to show support for a loved one.”
The company also notes that these emojis are not meant to represent all users with disabilities, but are said to be a starting point where presumably more will be added later. Whether or not these emojis will be approved is up to the consortium who will meet to vote on them, which if approved will get shortlisted for the next batch of emojis that are due for a release in March 2019.