Emoji faces to get racial diversity

EMOJI characters will be more representative of the real world with the announcement that they will soon come in a range of six skin tones.

The Unicode Consortium which manages the emoji standard has announced a plan to produce emoji faces in a range of skin tones based on the Fitzpatrick scale used by dermatologists.

The default colour will be a non-realistic yellow but users will be able to choose a skin tone that is more realistic.

In couple emoji, such as the popular icon of a man and woman joined at the head by a heart, the user will be able to specify different skin tones for each of the people.

The uniform emoji code will still be limited in other ways. Users, for instance, will be able to change the skin of the couple in love but cannot change their gender to signify two men or two women in love.

Before you reach for your smartphone to start spreading the news in a more racially descriptive way, you should know there is no rush. The changes are not expected to kick in until June next year.