San Francisco, Aug 10: 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.  What is DigiLocker? How to Create Account & Access Important Documents on the Indian Government's Cloud-Based Platform.

The shortlisted emoji includes representation of a person with hearing impairments 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.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 10, 2018 04:56 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).