Unicode Consortium accepts Apple’s request; adds 5 new gender diverse professional emojis

Apple’s Peter Edberg, who has been a software engineer at the company for 28 years, reached out to the Unicode Technical Committee recently, sharing mockups of the five new emoji.

Apple has requested the emojis to be both diverse and inclusive, as per the other recent changes that have been made by the Unicode Consortium.

The Unicode Consortium is the non-profit organization that is tasked to standardize the emojis that users can access across all hardware and operating systems. Not only will more existing emojis gain skin tone support, but nearly all of the human ones will be available in either male or female form. After the emojis were referred to the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, Apple requested the addition of five more in August, which includes artists, firefighter, pilot, astronaut, and judge. The company also provided fallback examples on how the professions can be conveyed through now available emoji, such as the astronaut represented by the emoji of a man or woman followed by a rocket ship. Apple’s solutions, however, would require use of just one emoji.

“This exciting update brings more gender options to existing characters, including new female athletes and professionals, adds lovely redesigns of popular emoji, a new rainbow flag and more family options”, Apple wrote in a company statement. Unicode member Jeremy Burge confirmed today that the icons Apple recommended will indeed be included in the upcoming Unicode 4.0 update, which also contains substantial improvements to the emoji standards’ gender diversity and skin tone options. The pistol emoji has been replaced by a water gun emoji.

iOS 10 arrives this fall, and with it, a whole bunch of new emojis.