For the first time, a multi-skin-toned handshake emoji is expected to be made available across devices and apps from 2022. Other emojis have been available in five different skin tones since 2015. However, the option had not yet been introduced for the handshake due to the complexity of applying it across two different hands.

This was flagged by Google’s creative director for emoji Jennifer Daniel when she joined the Unicode Technical Committee. Unicode is the standard that gives a unique code to each letter, number, and emoji so that they can be understood across all platforms. The difficulty with the handshake is that the five emoji skin tones — light, medium-light, medium, medium-dark, and dark — translate to 25 different handshake possibilities.

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Google explains that a typical emoji can take two years to produce. In order for the two different hands to have two different skin tones, though, they must be created separately — as a rightwards-facing hand and a leftwards-facing hand — instead of as one character. This is in part so that they can be shown separately as a fallback on devices or in apps where they cannot be shown merged together. Both the emoji itself (in this case the handshake) and then the modifying factors (the skin tone) must then be codified. The complexity of this issue was outlined by Daniel in her proposal for the multi-skin-toned handshake in 2019 and is why it has taken so long to become an option. Even then, the revised emoji was slated for release in 2021 as part of Unicode 14.0, but the COVID-19 pandemic meant this was delayed until 2022 at the earliest.

Why Is A Multi-Skin-Toned Handshake Emoji Important?

Skin tone options for emojis but not the handshake emoji

Not only does each new emoji have to be elegantly implemented on a technical level, but they must also be as inclusive as possible. Introducing variants for the handshake that only depicted the hands having the same skin tone, for example, would clearly not be acceptable due to the apparent delineation between people of different skin tones.

What's more, as Daniel's proposal explained, "This would be the only emoji depicting physical agreement amongst two people of different skin tones in a way that is not explicitly romantic in nature." This means the handshake will be a rare opportunity within the emoji palette to represent plutonic agreement between two people with different skin tones. In short, it's an opportunity to promote diversity, inclusion, and togetherness — and ensuring that is done as well as possible is another reason why the multi-skin-toned handshake emoji has taken so long to appear.

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Source: Google