San Francisco Aug 10 (IANS) Unicode Consortium the organisation that regulates emojis has shortlisted 179 candidates -- 61 characters plus variants -- for release in 2019.
Giving a thumbs up to diversity making up a large chunk of those new emoji are 55 characters to represent couples of different genders and skin tones The Verge reported on Thursday.
The shortlisted emoji includes representation of a person with hearing impariment as well.
The list of draft candidates will be reviewed and finalised in the next meeting this coming September Unicode Consortium said in a blog post.
Additionally eight "emoji provisional candidates" for 2020 have also been added which includes ninja military helmet mammoth feather dodo magic wand carpentry saw and a screwdriver it said.

--IANS rp/gb/vm