(CMR) Of all the things you think wouldn’t be affected by the latest coronavirus, emojis are probably one of them.
However, it turns out that even emojis are impacted by COVID-19, as the body which regulates the digital images, Unicode Consortium, said that it would be delaying the release of 2021 emojis until September of the coming year, as opposed to the usual March release date.
Unicode Consortium made the revelation in a release on April 8 highlighting that the pandemic was also taking a toll on its operations.
“Due to COVID-19, the Unicode Consortium has decided to postpone the release of version 14.0 of the Unicode Standard by 6 months, from March to September of 2021. This delay will also impact related specifications and data, such as new emoji characters,” read the release.
Mark Davis, President of Unicode Consortium noted because the non-profit organization relies heavily on efforts of volunteers, the organization would not be able to commit to the same schedule as in the past.
“Under the current circumstances we’ve heard that our contributors have a lot on their plates at the moment and decided it was in the best interests of our volunteers and the organizations that depend on the standard to push out our release date,” added Davis.
Given the delay of the release of Unicode 14.0, the deadline for submission of new emoji character proposals for Emoji 14.0 has also been postponed until September 2020.
The latest developments, don’t affect the new emojis announced on March 10, 2020, as emojis are typically approved in January before they're available across devices in September.
- Fascinated
- Happy
- Sad
- Angry
- Bored
- Afraid