Re: More scripts, not more emoji (Re: Accessibility Emoji)

[Marcel Schneider via Unicode]

On Sat, 14 Apr 2018 20:29:40 -0700, Markus Scherer  wrote:
>
> On Sat, Apr 14, 2018 at 5:50 PM, Marcel Schneider via Unicode  wrote:
> >
> > We need to get more scripts into Unicode, not more emoji.
> >
> > That is — somewhat inflated — the core message of a NYT article published 
> > six months ago,
> > and never shared here (no more than so many articles about Unicode, 
> > scripts, and emoji).
> > Some 100 scripts are missing in the Standard, affecting as many as 400 
> > million people worldwide.
> >
> > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/magazine/how-the-appetite-for-emojis-complicates-the-effort-to-standardize-the-worlds-alphabets.html
>
> You are right. One good way that you can help make it happen is to support 
> the Script Encoding Initiative which is mentioned in the article.
>
> Some of the AAC money goes there. And since the most popular adopted 
> characters are emoji, their popularity is helping close the gap that you
> pointed out.
>
>
> They have also helped in other ways -- they really motivated developers to 
> make their code work for supplementary code points, grapheme cluster 
> boundaries, font ligatures, spurred development of color font technology, and 
> got organizations to update to newer versions of Unicode faster than
> before. Several of these things are especially useful for recently added 
> scripts.

Thank you for the point. 

Indeed, the NYT article, too, is much more balanced than what I bounced to the 
List as an exaggerated takeaway. 

We send our thanks to the sponsors of the Adopt A Character program, to the 
SEI, and to the United States National Endowment for the 
Humanities, which funded the Universal Scripts Project. And last but not least, 
to the Unicode Consortium.

I note, too, that the cited 400 million people do write in less than fifty yet 
unsupported – but hopefully soon encoded – scripts.

Best regards,

Marcel

More scripts, not more emoji (Re: Accessibility Emoji)

[Marcel Schneider via Unicode]

We need to get more scripts into Unicode, not more emoji.

That is — somewhat inflated — the core message of a NYT article published six 
months ago,
and never shared here (no more than so many articles about Unicode, scripts, 
and emoji).
Some 100 scripts are missing in the Standard, affecting as many as 400 million 
people worldwide.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/magazine/how-the-appetite-for-emojis-complicates-the-effort-to-standardize-the-worlds-alphabets.html

(Just found while searching for Hanifi Rohingya script, thanks to the Wikipedia 
entry 
[trying to find out whether to include Hanifi Rohingya in beta feedback 
{closing soon}]).

On 01/04/18 08:27 Nathan Galt via Unicode wrote
> 
> I predict that these emoji will be extraordinarily popular in insults between 
> gamers on both Twitch and Discord. I’d wager, with suitable metrics 
> available, that using these for insult purposes will be the majority of all 
> accessibility-emoji use worldwide. Expected meanings:
> 
> - PERSON WITH WHITE CANE: “the person under discussion didn’t see that guy 
> who killed him/his partner/his whole team”
> - DEAF SIGN: “the person under discussion failed to notice an audio cue that 
> would have prevented his/his partner’s/his team’s death(s)”
> - PERSON IN MECHANIZED WHEELCHAIR: “the person under discussion failed to 
> properly press keys and move his mouse as he should have and his mechanical 
> failures caused his/his partner’s/his team's death(s)”
> 
> I don’t think the cultural impact of these will be as uniformly positive as 
> Apple hopes.
> 
> 
> > On Mar 26, 2018, at 9:51 AM, William_J_G Overington via Unicode  wrote:
> > 
> > I have been looking with interest at the following publication.
> > 
> > Proposal For New Accessibility Emoji
> > 
> > by Apple Inc.
> > 
> > www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18080-accessibility-emoji.pdf
> > 
> > I am supportive of the proposal. Indeed please have more such emoji as well.
> > 
> > [snip]
> > 
> > How could the accessibility emoji in the proposal be used in practice?
> > 
> > William Overington
> > 
> > Monday 26 March 2018
> 
> 
>

Re: Accessibility Emoji

[Nathan Galt via Unicode]

I predict that these emoji will be extraordinarily popular in insults between 
gamers on both Twitch and Discord. I’d wager, with suitable metrics available, 
that using these for insult purposes will be the majority of all 
accessibility-emoji use worldwide. Expected meanings:

- PERSON WITH WHITE CANE: “the person under discussion didn’t see that guy who 
killed him/his partner/his whole team”
- DEAF SIGN: “the person under discussion failed to notice an audio cue that 
would have prevented his/his partner’s/his team’s death(s)”
- PERSON IN MECHANIZED WHEELCHAIR: “the person under discussion failed to 
properly press keys and move his mouse as he should have and his mechanical 
failures caused his/his partner’s/his team's death(s)”

I don’t think the cultural impact of these will be as uniformly positive as 
Apple hopes.


> On Mar 26, 2018, at 9:51 AM, William_J_G Overington via Unicode 
> <unicode@unicode.org> wrote:
> 
> I have been looking with interest at the following publication.
> 
> Proposal For New Accessibility Emoji
> 
> by Apple Inc.
> 
> www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18080-accessibility-emoji.pdf
> 
> I am supportive of the proposal. Indeed please have more such emoji as well.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> How could the accessibility emoji in the proposal be used in practice?
> 
> William Overington
> 
> Monday 26 March 2018

Re: Accessibility Emoji

[Marcel Schneider via Unicode]

William,
 
On 29/03/18 17:03 William_J_G Overington via Unicode wrote:
> 
> I have been thinking about issues around the proposal.
> http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18080-accessibility-emoji.pdf
> There is a sentence in that document that starts as follows.
> 
> > Emoji are a universal language and a powerful tool for communication, 
 
That is clearly overstating the capabilities of emoji, and ignoring the 
borderline 
between verbal and pictographic expression. The appropriateness of each one 
depends mainly on semantics and context. The power of emoji may rely in their 
being polysemic, escaping censorship as already discussed during past years.
> 
> It seems to me that what is lacking with emoji are verbs and pronouns.
 
Along with these, one would need more nouns, too, setting up an autonomous 
language. That however is not the goal of emoji and is outside the scope of 
Unicode.
> 
> For example, "to be", "to have" and "to need". The verb "to need" might well 
be of particular importance in relation to accessibility considerations.
 
When accessibility matters, devices may be missing, and then the symbol charts 
are most appropriate, as seen. When somebody is pointing an object, the ‷need” 
case is most obvious anyway. Impaired persons may use a bundle of cards 
including 
textual messages. None of these justifies encoding extra emoji. E.g. when 
somebody 
wishes a relative to buy more bread while returning from work, the appropriate 
number
of loaves followed by an exclamation mark and a smile or heart may do it.
> 
> How could verbs be introduced into emoji? The verb "to love" can already be 
> indicated using a heart symbol.
 
This is the one that people are likely to be most embarrassed typing out. 
> 
> Should abstract designs be used? Or should emoji always be pictographic?
 
Yes, they should always be highly iconic, Asmus explained in detail. See:
 
http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2015-m08/0014.html
> 
> If abstract designs were introduced would it be possible for the standards 
> documents to include the meanings
> or would the standards documents need to simply use a geometrical description 
> and then the meanings be
> regarded as a higher level protocol outside of the standard?
 
On one hand, Unicode does not encode semantics; but on the other hand, on 
character level, semantics are 
part of the documentation accompanying a number of characters in the Charts. 
There is a balance between 
polysemics and disambiguation. As a thumb rule: characters are disambiguated to 
ensure correct processing
of the data, so far as the cost induced by handling multiple characters doesn’t 
outweigh the benefit. 
In putting your question, you already answered it, except that there are 
geometric figures encoded for UIs, 
that therefore already have a meaning, yet are mostly generically named, 
leaving the door open to alternate 
semantics.
> 
> For, if abstract emoji were introduced with the intention of them to be of 
> use as verbs in a universal language,
> it would be of benefit if the meanings were in the standard.
 
But such a language has clearly been stated as being out of scope of Unicode, 
and we aren’t even allowed 
to further discuss that particular topic, given the mass of threads and e‐mails 
already dedicated to it in the past.
> 
> If abstract designs were used then the meanings would need to be learned. Yet 
> if the meanings were
> universal that could be a useful development.
 
It would not, because automatic translation tools already cater for these 
needs, and possibly better. See:
 
http://unicode.org/pipermail/unicode/2015-October/003005.html
> 
> I have wondered whether verb tenses could be usefully expressed using some of 
> the existing combining
> accent characters following an emoji verb character..
 
First of all, users should be likely to adopt the scheme in a fairly 
predictable way. I’m ignoring actual trends 
and can only repeat what has been said on this list: communities are missing, 
and so is interest. 
Hence, sadly to say, there is little through no point in elaborating further.
Personally I’m poorly armed to help building a user community, as I don’t have 
a smartphone, while being 
very busy with more and more tasks, leaving little time for many experiments.  
Sorry.
 
Best regards,
 
Marcel
> 
> For example, U+0302 COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT to indicate that the verb is 
> in the future tense, U+0304 COMBINING MACRON to indicate that the verb is in 
> the present tense, U+030C COMBINING CARON to indicate that the verb is in the 
> past tense, U+0303 COMBINING TILDE to indicate that the verb is in the 
> conditional tense.
> 
> The desirability of pronouns was raised by a gentleman in the audience of a 
> lecture at the Internationalization and Unicode Conference in 2015.
> 
> I tried to produce some designs. I could not find a way to do that with 
> conventional illustrative pictures, though I did produce a set of abstract 
> designs that could 

Re: Accessibility Emoji

[William_J_G Overington via Unicode]

I have been thinking about issues around the proposal.

http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18080-accessibility-emoji.pdf

There is a sentence in that document that starts as follows.

> Emoji are a universal language and a powerful tool for communication, 

It seems to me that what is lacking with emoji are verbs and pronouns.

For example, "to be", "to have" and "to need". The verb "to need" might well be 
of particular importance in relation to accessibility considerations.

How could verbs be introduced into emoji? The verb "to love" can already be 
indicated using a heart symbol.

Should abstract designs be used? Or should emoji always be pictographic?

If abstract designs were introduced would it be possible for the standards 
documents to include the meanings or would the standards documents need to 
simply use a geometrical description and then the meanings be regarded as a 
higher level protocol outside of the standard?

For, if abstract emoji were introduced with the intention of them to be of use 
as verbs in a universal language, it would be of benefit if the meanings were 
in the standard.

If abstract designs were used then the meanings would need to be learned. Yet 
if the meanings were universal that could be a useful development.

I have wondered whether verb tenses could be usefully expressed using some of 
the existing combining accent characters following an emoji verb character..

For example, U+0302 COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT to indicate that the verb is in 
the future tense, U+0304 COMBINING MACRON to indicate that the verb is in the 
present tense, U+030C COMBINING CARON to indicate that the verb is in the past 
tense, U+0303 COMBINING TILDE to indicate that the verb is in the conditional 
tense.

The desirability of pronouns was raised by a gentleman in the audience of a 
lecture at the Internationalization and Unicode Conference in 2015.

I tried to produce some designs. I could not find a way to do that with 
conventional illustrative pictures, though I did produce a set of abstract 
designs that could possibly be useful in application; they could be displayed 
in colourful emoji style yet also in monochrome without ambiguity. Yet they are 
abstract designs, so meanings would need to be learned rather than indicated by 
the picture itself. Yet if the meanings were universal, that could be useful. 
Should there be abstract emoji or should emoji only be conventional pictures?

William Overington

Thursday 29 March 2018

Accessibility Emoji

[William_J_G Overington via Unicode]

I have been looking with interest at the following publication.

Proposal For New Accessibility Emoji

by Apple Inc.

www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18080-accessibility-emoji.pdf

I am supportive of the proposal. Indeed please have more such emoji as well.

In relation to the two dogs.

My own (limited) experience of guide dogs for people with a vision disability, 
just from seeing them in the street and on television is that in the United 
Kingdom the dogs often have a yellow protective coat with silvery strips on 
them so that they can be more easily seen. It may also help them being more 
readily recognised as each being a guide dog. The dogs tend to be of a type of 
dog of rather wider aspect ratio, if that is the way to put it, than the dog in 
the sample glyph in the proposal document. The dogs tend to be a creamy yellow 
colour, though there was a famous guide dog who was all black, famous as the 
guide dog was allowed to accompany a then Member of Parliament into the House 
of Commons Chamber in London.

So, while the two rod guide handle, contrasted with a floppy lead, is a good 
disambiguation guide for the two types of assistance dogs, I suggest that using 
the presence of what the proposal terms a vest for disambiguation may not be 
appropriate.

Also the word vest appears to have different meanings in British English and 
American English.

Maybe jacket might be better choice of word than vest for the standards 
document.

What about the colour and type of the dog? Perhaps easier to add in now than 
later?

What about a person with a hidden disability? Many people have a hidden 
disability yet do not have a service dog as the nature of the particular hidden 
disability or maybe hidden disabilities does not need the help of a service dog.

Should there be an emoji for a person with a hidden disability? Or maybe more 
than one such emoji so as to disambiguate the types of hidden disability, 
always remembering to have an "other hidden disability" emoji so as to include 
all types of hidden disability?

Those questions, and indeed the whole proposal document, lead to asking for 
what purposes these emoji are envisioned as becoming used?

For example, a person with a hidden disability might not like to be referred to 
as such, yet may like to describe himself or herself as having a hidden 
disability if trying to find appropriate facilities relevant to the particular 
disability, such as a toilet for a person with a disability with the additional 
facilities thereof, or seeking access to a chair or a first-aid room, or 
seeking help for opening a door, or maybe when requesting a special diet, such 
as a gluten-free diet.

How could the accessibility emoji in the proposal be used in practice?

William Overington

Monday 26 March 2018