Disability rights campaigners have welcomed the introduction of new accessibility-themed emojis.
The new emoji characters include hearing aids, wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, white ‘probing’ canes and guide dogs.
The Unicode Consortium developed this new range of emojis for their most recent emoji roll-out following a number of complaints to technology giant Apple from people who were concerned there were no emojis portraying disabled people.
Phil Talbot from disability charity Scope, said: “Social media is hugely influential and it’s great to see these new disability-inclusive emojis.”
It also shows another great step forward in achieving greater representation of disabled people and disability in the popular mainstream media. One in seven people in the world have some form of disability so it’s great to see these people finally represented in this way.
In total 230 new emojis feature in the latest release from Unicode and, as well as the new accessibility-themed emojis, there are also new emojis depicting a rickshaw, a sari, a finger-pinching hand, and a parachutist, plus many more.
These new emojis should be available for most smartphone users later this year.
