Official Interracial Emojis Unveiled Following Successful Tinder Petition
The final designs for the brand new range of interracial emojis have been released, after initial plans to add the characters were revealed earlier this year.
The news marks Tinder’s #RepresentLove campaign as a success. The dating app launched a petition in early 2018, which gained over 50,000 signatures, requesting more inclusive ethnicity pairings be introduced.
A survey commissioned by Tinder found that users thought the app had helped to remove most of the stigma surrounding interracial couples.
Chief Marketing Officer Jenny Campbell told Mashable: “Tinder advocates for the freedom of people to live how they want to live and love who they want to love.
“The success of our Interracial Couple Emoji campaign shows how powerful the voices are of the more than 50,000 people who joined our cause by signing our petition; together, we effected change”.
The Unicode Consortium, the governing body which oversees the official emoji index, said in a statement that it had to renovate current mechanisms in order to allow two-person images to support separate skin tone distinctions.
230 new emojis are expected to be released as part of the Unicode 12.0 update, taking the total number in the catalogue to 137,929.
Also set to be included are icons representing certain disabilities, including wheelchair, hearing aid and guide dog images.
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