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Meet the 16-year-old Saudi girl behind Apple's new emoji for hijab-wearing women

Meet the 16-year-old Saudi girl behind Apple's new emoji for hijab-wearing women

Rayouf, who wears a hijab, was surprised that there was no emoji to represent her and other women like her who wear hijab.

Photo: WCPO Photo: WCPO

Muslim women who wear hijab now have an emoji to represent them after a 16-year-old Saudi girl's proposed the idea to developers.  

Rayouf Alhumedhi had pitched the idea last year to The Unicode Consortium, a non-profit organisation that develops new emojis.

Rayouf, who wears a hijab, was surprised that there was no emoji to represent her and other women like her who wear hijab.

"The fact that there wasn't an emoji to represent me and the millions of other hijabi women across the world was baffling to me," the CNN quoted her as saying.

On Monday July 17, which marked World Emoji Day, Apple Inc announced that had accepted the design along with others that include breast-feeding women of all skin colours and much more.

Rayouf, who now lives in Vienna, was overjoyed to see the new emoji. "I'm really happy with what it looks like. I'm just so excited because it's finally came out after all the work, all the writing," she said.

She said that she wanted the emoji to be available in different skin tones so that it could also different races.

The 16-year-old had come up with the hijab emoji idea in Berlin, where she had first moved with her family from Saudi Arabia.

In recent years, the Unicode Consortium has increased the number of official emoji to 2,666.

The organisation has also made great efforts to include diverse skin tones, flags and occupations among its emojis.

Alhumedhi says that this move will definitely help the Muslim community and will promote further tolerance.

"But overall, I think the Muslim community will benefit from it. Even if only in terms of representation. It's only an emoji. It's not a game changer. But it will make people happy. I hope so," she said.

 

Published on: Jul 20, 2017, 3:53 PM IST
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