Image caption No sign of Wales, Scotland or England... for now

Emoji flags for Wales, Scotland and England could be introduced to devices next year, the authority on computer text and characters has said.

A UK flag is already available on smartphones and other devices.

Unicode has proposed a mechanism for making the flags available from 2017, but manufacturers will have to add the new emojis to their keyboards.

It has now launched a public consultation after the proposal to add the flags of the home nations.

Unicode also recommended adding the flags of US states and other territories that are not currently available as standard.

Emoji flags already available include those for Ascension Island, St Barthelemy, Curaçao, Diego Garcia and Djibouti.

The proposal for a new range of emoji flags was submitted by Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia and BBC Wales' social media lead, Owen Williams.

The flag for Northern Ireland has not been included in the proposal as it does not have official status, although it is included in an unrelated proposal asking Unicode to adopt "regional indicator" emojis.