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signalapp / Signal-Android

A private messenger for Android.
https://signal.org
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
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Human emojis lack a) person without hair and b) (elderly) person with grey hair #9784

Closed scoder closed 4 years ago

scoder commented 4 years ago

Bug description

The differently coloured emojis do not just give a skin colour, they also give a certain (corresponding) hair colour. However, not everyone (regardless of gender) has hair, be it for personal preference, genetic, age, health or whatever reasons. Some health reasons are also temporary, in which case it might not be helpful/nice/empathic to send the person a reminder of what is missing or how that person "should" look.

Similarly, grey hair variants are missing entirely, although a large part of the world population, most notably elderly people, actually has grey hair. Most of the professions represented in the set of emojis do not prevent elderly people from doing them, but the set of emoji variants excludes them visibly.

I personally find it sad that a set of emoji variants that explicitly and clearly strives for inclusion in fact excludes so many people.

greyson-signal commented 4 years ago

Are these emojis just missing from Signal, or are they missing from the emoji standard entirely?

scoder commented 4 years ago

Good question. Looks like the Unicode standard has at least something to say on that topic: https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f469_200d_1f9b3 https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f474 https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f475 https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f9d3

Don't know how the diversity variations are done in general, though.

scoder commented 4 years ago

Ok, learned something. The skin colour variation is done with "Fitzpatrick modifiers". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color Hair type/colour is not an option there.

greyson-signal commented 4 years ago

It looks like we do have the bald and elderly emojis available in our keyboard. We should be up-to-date with unicode 13 in general. If you see any missing, let us know :+1:. If you're specifically asking about reactions, we're tracking that work at #9776. Thanks!

scoder commented 4 years ago

Yeah, I think it's a general emoji standard issue, not Signal specific.

To clarify, I was not referring to the Unicode characters. Referring to people as specifically being elderly or bald has its context in conversations, but not when you are trying to refer to a bald programmer or grey haired gardener. Implicitly expecting humans to a) have hair that is b) not grey is still wrong.