When it comes to emoticons, we don’t really give it much thought. After all they’re just meant to be cute representations of emotions and sometimes they’re just there to add a little bit of flavor when texting someone. However it seems that recently Apple has been facing pressure to add cultural diversity in its Emoji.
Back in 2012, Apple updated Emoji to add same-sex couples which basically shows where the Cupertino company stands when it comes to homosexuality. This was a step in the right direction but apparently some thought that the next step would be to add more cultural diversity, where as it stands most of the characters represented appear to be caucasian.
In an email sent from Katie Cotton, Apple’s VP of Worldwide Corporate Communications to MTV, Apple basically admitted that more work needs to be done there and they’re working at bringing more diversity to the table. “Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms. There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard.”
There is no word on when Apple plans to roll out a more diversified set of Emojis, but at the very least something is being done about it. Who knows, we might even see it in the next iOS update. In the meantime what do you guys think? Do you think it’s about time that your culture/race be represented by Apple’s Emojis?