This page is a compilation of formal public feedback received so far. See Feedback for further information on this issue, how to discuss it, and how to provide feedback.
Date/Time: Sat Sep 22 18:02:34 CDT 2018
Name: Scott Sasaki
Report Type: Feedback on an Encoding Proposal
Opt Subject: DEAF PERSON emoji draft candidate
In response to proposal L2/18‑229. http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18229-apple-zwj-deaf.pdf I fully support inclusion in emoji, however I believe that this emoji is mislabeled and will be confusing right from the start. Deaf people look exactly the same as hearing people, therefore the CLDR Short name of "DEAF PERSON" is misleading. The example illustration provided by Apple depicts a person pointing at their *eye*. The proposal does not state if that was intended or a mistake. Clarification should be made. Additionally, the CLDR shortname should be adjusted to reflect the intended subject of the pointing. The proposal states "Yes, there are currently no emoji that can be used to depict deafness or deaf people. " To which I counter with 👂🚫, the old ASL sign for DEAF was "EAR CLOSED". (Person points to their ear with index finger, then uses two hands palm facing outward and close together like a sliding gate.) The point above is also in response to section H "Can the concept be represented by another emoji or sequence". Thank you, Scott Sasaki
Date/Time: Wed Sep 26 23:34:42 CDT 2018
Name: Eduardo Marín Silva
Report Type: Feedback on an Encoding Proposal
Opt Subject: Name of proposed character: 1F9CF
The current name for this emoji is DEAF PERSON, which fails on two fronts. One, it is not general enough, and two it can be seen as discriminatory. Strictly speaking, only mute people must use sign language, since there are deaf people that can talk, so this excludes people who are mute but not deaf. The more general name would be PERSON USING SIGN LANGUAGE.
Date/Time: Tue Oct 23 17:36:07 CDT 2018
Name: Kent Karlsson
Report Type: Feedback on an Encoding Proposal
Opt Subject: emoji 12.0 comments
Regarding: 62 X1FA79 🩹 — adhesive bandage bandage Firstly, bandaids are often "skin colored" (even though that is often gets a very limited interpretation). So skin color modifiers would be appropriate, even though not technically representing skin. See for instance https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/people-of-color-can-finally-wear- bandages-that-match-their-skin_us_56155977e4b0fad1591a6845. Secondly, some bandaids are "fun colored", e.g. red or blue or with little drawings on them (whatever is popular) (or plain white or mostly transparent, but that does not show well in an emoji); especially those intended for children. See for instance https://www.band-aid.com/products /for-kids. Not sure how to best handle (some!) such modifications. (There are many other variations of bandaids, but cannot cover them all in emoji...) 🥱 — yawning face bored | tired | yawn This one should have skin color variations; it does not seem to have that (according to http://www.unicode.org/emoji/future/emoji-candidates.html as of 24/10). 1F91D 🤝 ➕ handshake agreement | hand | handshake | meeting | shake ➕ 5 char & skin Eeh, there are two (depicted) hands from two different persons; they may have different skin colour; but IIUC this proposal only covers that the two have the same skin colour. That seems to be a big mistake.
Date/Time: Sun Nov 18 11:50:28 CST 2018
Name: Charlotte Buff
Report Type: Public Review Issue
Opt Subject: PRI #387: Collation changes
I propose tweaking the collation and categorisation of several emoji: • MECHANICAL LEG should be sorted after LEG rather than before it in order to be consistent with FLEXED BICEPS and MECHANICAL ARM. • Hair components should either not be considered “main” emoji at all since they cannot be used on their own, or other emoji components like Fitzpatrick modifiers should be added to the table as well to stay consistent. • ORANGUTAN should be sorted close to the other primates MONKEY and GORILLA. • COW should be sorted directly following COW FACE as with other animal faces. • AVOCADO and AUBERGINE are fruit, so they should be in the ‘food-fruit’ category rather than ‘food-vegetable’. • MILKY WAY is potentially better placed in the ‘sky & weather’ category among the various stars. • The ordering of the coloured squares and circles is messy. The following corrections need to be made to achieve the same order as the coloured hearts: ⁃ MEDIUM BLACK CIRCLE should be between LARGE PURPLE CIRCLE and MEDIUM WHITE CIRCLE. ⁃ BLACK LARGE SQUARE should be between LARGE PURPLE SQUARE and WHITE LARGE SQUARE. ⁃ The medium-small squares need to be switched around, as do the small squares. Black should be before white in all cases.
Date/Time: Tue Dec 4 07:29:36 CST 2018
Name: Christoph Päper
Report Type: Public Review Issue
Opt Subject: PRI387: Ballet emoji
Rüdiger Landmann, in his original proposal [L2/18-113] that resulted in the Unicode 12.0 beta Candidate Emoji [X+1FA70] BALLET SHOES, requested a "pair of ballet shoes (pointe shoes)" to represent "ballet in a more abstract and general sense", but also female (ballerina) and male ballet dancer emojis. The original recommendations by the Emoji Subcommittee (ESC) for the 2018-Q2 UTC [L2/18-143] omitted the people and included only "Ballet Shoes" with a note saying "But as clothing (no visible skin): BALLET SHOES", which was changed in the first revision [L2/18-143r] to "Originally proposed with visible feet, but changed to just the clothing." and remained so in the final, second revision [L2/18-143r2]. The decision by the ESC to concentrate on the clothing emoji was obviously founded in the fact that people emojis are more "expensive" to implement for vendors, because they almost always require 2 or 3 gender and 6 skin-tone variants, which increase file size and clutter character picker user interfaces. The pseudo-statistical metrics provided in the proposal (as required by the ESC process) hold true for any kind of Ballet emoji. The proposal, dated 31 March 2018, did not consider the Unicode 11.0 emoji 🥿 U+1F97F FLAT SHOE at all, which was in late beta state at the time, but only discusses 💃 U+1F483, 🕺 U+1F57A, 🙆 U+1F646 and 👯 U+1F46F in section H. I agree with the decision to encode an emoji to represent ballet and I also agree with the decision to focus on a clothing emoji for this. The ESC process should, however, have resulted in rejecting a Ballet Shoe or Ballet Shoes emoji because it is not sufficiently distinct from the now existing Flat Shoe emoji. (This was original referred to as WOMANS FLAT SHOE, see the critique in [L2/17-296] which actually included BALLET SHOE as a suggested alternative name). An even more characteristic and iconic, though -- as is appropriate for pictographs -- borderline stereotypical piece of clothing associated with ballet is the tutu dress, even if it is mostly worn only by female dancers. I therefore propose to change the UCS name of X+1FA70 from BALLET SHOES to TUTU DRESS and to update the sample glyph accordingly. The purpose remains the same and the semantics are hardly altered when the visuals and the designation change. If my proposal is rejected for whichever reason, I reiterate my previous critique uttered for 🧤 U+1F9E4 GLOVES and 🧦 U+1F9E6 SOCKS: pictographic emojis should always be encode as single items even if they usually come in (chiral) pairs, which could then be encoded as a simple and intuitive ZWJ sequence if deemed necessary. This is repeating and agreeing with the concern already raised by Michael Everson [L2/18-234 = N5008]. Someone could even make a point in favor of just encoding _Ballet Shoes_ as the ZWJ sequence U+1F97F+200D+1F97F, but I think that would be misguided. PS: On a different but slightly related note, the UTC should also consider to change the CLDR name for 💃 U+1F483 to _Classical Dancer_ or _Ballroom Dancer_ and for 🕺 U+1F57A to _Disco Dancer_, while, at the same time, introducing gender variants for both emojis. Others might argue that _Dancer Wearing a Dress_ and _Dancer Wearing a Suit_ would be more inclusive. [U+1F97F]: https://emojipedia.org/flat-shoe/ "🥿" [X+1FA70]: https://unicode.org/emoji/future/emoji-candidates.html#x1fa70 [L2/18‑113]: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18113-ballet-emoji.pdf "Proposal to add new emoji to represent ballet (2018-03-31)" [L2/18-143]: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18143-emoji-recs.pdf "ESC Recommendations for 2018Q2 UTC (2018-04-27)" [L2/18-143r]: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18143r-emoji-recs.pdf "ESC Recommendations for 2018Q2 UTC (2018-05-01)" [L2/18-143r2]: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18143r2-emoji-recs.pdf "ESC Recommendations for 2018Q2 UTC (2018-05-03)" [L2/17-296]: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17296-emoji-candidate-names.pdf [L2/18-234 = N5008]: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18234-n5008-emoji-cmt.pdf "Feedback on draft candidates fore Emoji 12.0 (L2/18-143R2) by Michael Everson (2018-07-18)"
Date/Time: Tue Dec 4 07:45:29 CST 2018
Name: Christoph Päper
Report Type: Public Review Issue
Opt Subject: PRI387: Blood Drop emoji
The Red Heart emoji is made from ❤ U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART (followed by VS-16 U+FE0F). There is accordingly no obvious reason why the proposed and drafted Blood Drop emoji, which I agree is useful, should acquire a new code point instead of reusing 🌢 U+1F322 BLACK DROPLET, to become the reddish counterpart to the bluish 💧 U+1F4A7 DROPLET used for water, tear, sweat.
Date/Time: Tue Jan 1 07:25:01 CST 2019
Name: WANG Yifan
Report Type: Public Review Issue
Opt Subject: On PRI #387: X1F9CF DEAF PERSON
Emoji 12.0 Beta contains a proposed emoji at X1F9CF under category "person- gesture", labeled "deaf person", whose image resembles the word form "deaf" in American Sign Language (ASL), by extension in French Sign family, and International Sign. I have serious concerns about the planned implementation of this emoji. According to the original proposal, L2/18-229R, the developers seem to want to have a universal emoji iconizes the Deaf by depicting the sign form for it. However, the idea is defective, both in theory and in practice. The theoretical defect is that, of course, not all sign languages share the same form. They are not just superficially different, but inherently. Major SL families in modern world are independently developed among network of deaf schools in industrialized countries[1]. Although there is International Sign, its position is somewhat like Esperanto rather than the real unified world SL. Thus choosing such an universal symbol based on a sign is just like an attempt, say, to choose a character from a certain script as the universal symbol for the concept "writing": you could argue for Latin A because it has widest acceptance and strong historical background; or you could support Chinese 字 as it exactly means that, and so on; but any of them could be rightfully universal? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language#Classification The practical difficulty is much more straightforward. The given image can be not only foreign but even misleading in some SLs. Though the word "deaf" in major SLs tends to involve reference to ear, it is rather pictographic association, that have something to do with "ear", not guaranteeing a particular handshape always stands for "deaf". Concretely speaking: - In Chinese SL one-finger pointing just means "ear"[2]; "deaf" needs two[3]. - It is also "ear" in South African SL[4]; "deaf" needs two fingers. - In Japanese SL, it is close to one-hand representation of "hearing" (i.e. non-deafness)[5], as well as in Korea[6] and Taiwan[7]. I heard (not literally) the other time that JSL speakers consider these ASL words look "the other way round": their "deaf" looks "hearing"; their "hearing" looks "signing". - It exactly matches "hearing" in British[8], Australian[9], and New Zealand SL; "deaf" needs two fingers. - It matches "hearing ability" in Russian SL[10]. - In Vietnam, several lineages of SL coexist. Simply pointing at ear associated with "hear" in some regions[11]. Anyway, the word "deaf" must have finger hooked in most regions[12][13]. - Pointing at ear alone means "hearing" in German SL as well as several central European SLs[14]. It is quite fatal that the glyph represents the Hearing, the antonym of the Deaf, in many parts of the world (please compare the list with the map on [1]), which would create foreseeable confusion and go against the purpose of proposal. [2]: https://shouyu.51240.com/%E8%80%B3%E6%9C%B5__shouyus/ [3]: https://shouyu.51240.com/%E8%81%8B__shouyus/ [4]: https://youtu.be/5fGXrorf4f8?t=388 [5]: https://www2.nhk.or.jp/signlanguage/enquete.cgi?dno=6324 [6]: http://sldict.korean.go.kr/front/sign/signContentsView.do?origin_no=12349 (hearing ability) [7]: "聽人" on http://tsl.ccu.edu.tw/web/chinese/strokes.php?stroke=19&page=10 [8]: https://www.signbsl.com/sign/hearing (note: ignore the description) [9]: http://www.auslan.org.au/dictionary/words/hearing-1.html [10]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw4MBBTt2Sc [11]: https://tudienngonngukyhieu.com/tu-ngu/nghe-2831 [12]: https://tudienngonngukyhieu.com/tu-ngu/diec-1675 [13]: https://tudienngonngukyhieu.com/tu-ngu/diec-5356 [14]: https://www.spreadthesign.com/en.us/word/1302/hearing/ The original proposal emphasizes support from World Federation of the Deaf, but I am suspicious of what degree of communication has been made between them, as basic misunderstandings about sign languages have been found in the document, especially that before revision. It's not without precedent the consortium made haste encoding characters without sufficient advice from the presumed user base, and caused trouble (emoji as well), so there should be more cautious consideration dealing with languages the proposer does not have first-hand knowledge. Suggested solutions: 1. Change the character name Change it to more transparent name e.g. PERSON POINTING TO NEAR-SIDE EAR, and put annotation such as "represents 'deaf' in ..." as needed. It is safer and opens up broad possibility for extension, but possibly ends up registering tens of "deaf emoji". 2. Locale-based glyphs Encode only one code point and ships with multiple glyphs that match the local handshape according to the locale setting. It may facilitate interoperability, but has difficulty aligning with oral language locales, which is irrelevant to SL classification (e.g. American and British SLs are unrelated, so you cannot fallback to "en" from "en-US" and "en-GB"; Regions that embrace competing systems like Vietnam are problematic, maybe create sublocales like vi-hanoi and vi-hochiminh etc?) 3. Replace the character Replace it with more universally agreeable symbol of the Deaf, if any.