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Responding to users' complaints about a lack of characters whose skin reflects the variety of people who use smartphones, the group that sets technical standards is adding five more shades to the mix.

The Unicode Consortium had previously backed only one skin color, a yellow-orange tone that it considered generic. But it threw away that approach after a wide call for more variety.

If you're late to the emoji party, they're the characters that use faces and other humanlike images to express emotions and ideas. The new plan lets people use emoji that look like them — and they'll also be able to make groups of emoji in which the faces don't all look like one another.

The change would take effect next year; here's how the consortium explains it:

Science

The new plan lets people use emoji that look like them, and make groups of emoji in which the faces don't all look like one another.

2015 emoji update will include more diverse skin-tones

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