This change updates Chromium’s emoji rendering behavior in Forced Colors Mode. During computed-value resolution, emoji whose font-variant-emoji value computes to normal or unicode are rendered using their monochrome glyphs when available. Chromium will therefore suppress color emoji rendering, which ensures emojis fully participate in the Forced Colors Mode pipeline and respect system high-contrast colors. Behavior outside forced colors mode is unchanged.
Forced Colors Mode (High Contrast Mode) is designed to improve readability for visually impaired users by applying system-defined high-contrast colors across all content. However, colorful emoji do not adapt to these enforced colors. They often retain their original multicolor appearance, which can make them blend into the background, appear low-contrast, or become visually distracting. This undermines the purpose of the mode and creates inconsistent accessibility behavior compared to the rest of the text rendering pipeline. To address this, Chromium now ensures that in Forced Colors Mode, at computed-value time, any emoji whose font-variant-emoji value resolves to normal or unicode will render using a monochrome variant when available. This makes emoji follow the same contrast and color constraints as surrounding text, improves readability, and aligns emoji rendering with user expectations for high-contrast environments.