Unicode announced Monday that it is working on a proposal to make emojis more diverse with the introduction of the first white and black emojis.
Five new shades, ranging from pink and brown to black, will make their debut with Unicode version 8.0, which will be launched in June 2015, according to CNN Money.
Emojis, sometimes called emoticons, were introduced in Japan in 1999 as yellow phone text pictographs that serve as tools for expressing feelings.
"People all over the world want to have emoji that reflect more human diversity, especially for skin tone," Unicode said.
The proposal is intended to address concerns about the color of emoji characters, as there were no African American characters in the 250 new emojis introduced in version 7.0 in June, PC Magazine reported. Mobile phone users will be able to change the shade of the emoji by long-pressing on the icon. However, the shades may be different depending on the platform.
"These characters have been designed so that even when diverse color images for human emoji are not available, readers can see what the intended meaning was," the proposal reads.
The new skin tones are based on the six tones of the Fitzpatrick scale, a dermatology standard created by Harvard dermatologist Thomas Fitzpatrick in 1975, CNN Money reported. Human skin color is classified by the scale based on how it responds to ultraviolet light.
Unicode said the new mechanism won't be able to encode emojis based on other forms of diversity, such as hairstyles and colors, facial hair, body shapes, eyeglasses, and headwear, PC Magazine reported.
The company's move for more diverse emojis follows two years after Apple added two new images with its iOS 6 mobile operating system that represented gay and lesbian couples.
