Google is launching a new feature designed to make the digital world more inclusive as they release 53 new gender-fluid emoji on Pixel phones in beta this week. These will be added to all Android Q phones later this year.
According to Fast Company, the emoji have been specifically designed to appear neither male nor female. They are Google’s attempt at simplifying the emoji keyboard with more universal characters, thus making Google the first (tech) company to “acknowledge gender as something that was fluid rather than binary. ”
“It’s like we’re all at the pool and it’s like the water is cold,” Jennifer Daniel, a designer at Google, tells Fast Company. “Some people want to go swimming, but we’ll wait for someone to swim first. We just dove in first.”
The internet giant debuted the gender-neutral emojis on Tuesday as part of the launch of Android Q Beta.
Those who have one of these phones can download the Beta now. For everyone else, they will be available with the official release of Android Q later this year.
The emojis will feature curly, chin-length hair. In some cases, Google has tweaked the outfits to ensure the emojis appear gender-neutral.
“It is an impossible task to communicate gender in a single image,” Daniels says. “It’s a construct. It lives dynamically on a spectrum.”
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