Draft Candidates for Emoji 12.0 Beta (2019): more accessibility & skin tones for multi-person emoji

Emoji The Emoji 12.0 Beta contains 236 Emoji Draft Candidates
<http://www.unicode.org/emoji/future/emoji-candidates.html>, consisting
of 61 characters plus 175 sequences. These are slated for release in
2019Q1 together with Unicode Version 12.0.

The emoji are in the following categories: 3 smileys & emotion, 209
people & body, 7 animals & nature, 9 food & drink, 6 travel & places, 3
activities, 15 objects, and 12 miscellaneous symbols. 50 of the new
emoji (including gender/skin-tone variants) are for accessibility, such
as /ear with hearing aid/ and /woman in manual wheelchair/. The hearts,
circles, and squares now have the same set of colors for decorative
and/or descriptive uses.

Multi-person emoji now have skin-tone variants:
<http://www.unicode.org/emoji/future/emoji-candidates.html#family>

(A) Full Emoji v12.0 support requires that the holding-hands emoji (👫
👬 👫) with specific genders be supported with 55 combinations of mixed
skin tones, such as:

    * man with dark skin tone and woman with light skin tone holding hands
    * woman with medium skin tone and woman with medium light skin tone
      holding hands
    * man with light skin tone and man with light skin tone holding hands

(B) Full Emoji v12.0 support requires that the 6 multi-person emoji
(👯️‍ 🤼 🤝 💏 💑 👪) without specific gender be supported with the 5
human skin tones, such as:

    * family (adult+adult+child) with dark skin tone
    * couples with heart (adult+adult) with medium skin tone
    * couples kissing (adult+adult) with light skin tone

A mechanism is provided for mixed skin tones for emoji in group B, such
as with a family of man+woman+girl+boy, but support is optional.

The following notes are relevant for implementers:

   1. The 40 holding-hands emoji with mixed skin tones have a simpler
      internal representation
      <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-15.html#SkinTonesForGroupingsUsingSequences>,
      compared to the previous draft. The 15 with uniform skin tones use
      a single character plus skin-tone modifiers.
   2. Implementations may optionally support all combinations of mixed
      skin tones for the 6 multi-person emoji in the B group. This can
      be a large number — over 4,000 for the family emoji alone — and
      thus may not be practical for all devices.
   3. Clearer definitions are now provided in the specification, along
      with a new set for Basic_Emoji
      <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-15.html#def_basic_emoji_set>.
      For other details, see the specification
      <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-15.html#Modifications>.

The complete list of emoji sequences for Emoji 12.0 will be finalized
during the next UTC meeting in January 2019. The CLDR
<http://cldr.unicode.org/> English names and keywords for the new emoji
characters will be finalized within the next month, and translation into
80+ languages (such as Slavic languages
<https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/34/annotations/slavic.html>) will
begin. Feedback is welcome on the sorting order
<https://unicode.org/draft/emoji/charts-11.0/emoji-ordering.html> and
the English names and keywords.
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<http://unicode.org/consortium/adopt-a-character.html>, to help the
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http://blog.unicode.org/2018/10/draft-candidates-for-emoji-120-beta.html

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