The emoji keyboard is looking to become more inclusive – Apple has revealed that it’s working on making its emoji collection more racially diverse.
Despite originating from Japan, few emoji characters are non-Caucasian.
However, in response to a request from MTV Act questioning the lack of diversity, an Apple spokesperson revealed that the company had been working on diversifying the set.
“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.”
– Katie Cotton, vice president of worldwide corporate communications for Apple
The call for racially diverse emojis isn’t a new one, however. Believe it or not, the ball began to roll back in 2012 thanks to our favorite tongue-wiggler…
RT if you think there needs to be an #emojiethnicityupdate
— Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) December 19, 2012
Of course, it’s not unheard of for Apple to make changes to the emoji keyboard – the last major update came packaged as part of iOS 6 and saw the addition of gay and lesbian couples.
This was also the first time iOS users could use emojis natively, rather than through third-party apps.
While Apple have given no indication on time-scale (though they did confirm the statement to The Verge), it’s likely that any update will come alongside a larger update, especially likely following the enamored response to the revelation.
We could even see Apple lead their iOS 8 revamp this summer with the emoji overhaul.
Okay, that might be going a bit far.