Bitmoji is working on more diversity options, including a wheelchair

Bitmoji is all about presenting yourself to the world, at least in animated form. And soon, people with disabilities will have more choices on how to do just that. 

The company lets users create cartoon avatars of themselves, complete with eyeglasses, hats, and other accessories, for platforms such as Snapchat and iMessage. A Bitmoji employee recently told Mashable the company is working to add wheelchairs. Several employees also said Bitmoji is working on adding other more diverse customization options. 

Mashable reached out to Snap (which owns Bitmoji) to confirm that the project is underway. Snap wouldn’t comment directly on the progress, but said that it is continually working to improve and expand offerings in the Bitmoji design menu. Snap also pointed Mashable to Bitmoji’s current support article on wheelchairs, which says it “hope[s] to have a solution in the future” for users who want them. 

Bitmoji isn’t the only company or organization increasing its representation of people with disabilities. Last year, Unicode added new emoji that depict a person in a wheelchair, a service dog, hearing aids, and more. 

“I think it’s really exciting because it shows that we’re moving beyond conceptions of disability that place [it] in the category of something deficient, or something that needs to be fixed or cured,” Lawrence Carter-Long, director of communications for the Disability Rights, Education, and Defense Fund, told Mashable. “It recognizes that it’s more now. That disability is a community, constituency, and an identity.”

On a platform like Bitmoji, where users craft versions of themselves, it’s especially important that people have the ability to represent themselves with or without their adaptive devices.

“If you talk to most wheelchair users, they’re going to tell you that a wheelchair to them is a chariot of independence,” Carter-Long said. “With the new Bitmoji options, people have the ability to say “this wheelchair is a part of my identity, my community.”

Carter-Long says these actions are overdue, but he is optimistic that there’s more to come.

This is a signal that people with disabilities “are proud of who they are,” Carter-Long said. “They’re proud of disability history and culture, and the rest of the world is just now catching on.”