Those odd characters on your emails and text messages are about to send a message that humanity comes in many colours.
New draft guidelines released by the computing industry consortium Unicode offer a broader range of options for emojis, the ideograms used for various visual messages sent online.
That includes making them available in various skin tones.
"People all over the world want to have emoji that reflect more human diversity," said the latest draft released by Google's Mark Davis and Apple's Peter Edberg.
The new guidelines offer characters based on the six tones of the Fitzpatrick scale, a standard used in dermatology.
Emojis were initially developed in Japan but later adopted into global computing standards for use in electronic messages around the world.
The symbols may include anything from a yellow heart to a lollipop, but many are based on smiley faces.
The proposed changes still need approval from the Unicode consortium, but if adopted could take effect in mid-2015.
