Not an answer to your question exactly, but in case it's helpful, I find the iOS emoji keyboard a bit cumbersome to use even when I'm using the touch screen. So, I've assigned keyboard text replacements for emoji I use a lot. For example, zjo is 😂, ztu is 👍, zfp is 🤦‍♂️, etc. These work with braille screen input and I assume they'd also work with a braille keyboard.

@jcsteh I'll have to learn how to set that up.

Off the top of my head, Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Text replacement, but I might have that slightly wrong.

@jcsteh I was taught a different way. 😍