Some applications are general, others focus on a particular ethnicity or sexual orientation, but they often leave out people with disabilities. In the United States, two sisters launched Dateability to try to fill this gap.
Alexa and Jacqueline Child live together in Denver, Colorado and making this app is a personal matter for them. Since adolescence, Jacqueline has suffered from collagenoses, chronic illnesses that cause inflammation and prevent her from eating normally.
>> These apps that changed our lives. Tinder, meetings just a swipe away
And the men she was able to talk to via traditional dating apps weren’t always incredibly elegant: one of them asked her if she planned to have children because it would be selfish to pass it on to them. his genes. Another stopped seeing her on the advice of his mother who warned him that his life would no longer be much fun if he stayed with her…
In 2021, while hospitalized, she confided to her sister that she was worried about her love life, that she wished there was a dating app for people like her. It is not always easy to know how and when to give details of your health to a stranger. The two sisters have found that this is often a problem for people with disabilities on these applications. So, they came up with the idea together to create Dateability with the mission of “making love accessible to everyone”.
The anxiety of admitting your disability
Dateability was launched last year. The logo depicts a person in a wheelchair surrounded by a heart. In their profile, the user has the option to mention whether they use a wheelchair, whether they suffer from a food allergy or whether they have an immune deficiency. He obviously doesn’t have to give this information, but Alexa and Jacqueline Child think it’s a way to alleviate anxiety and “sarmassophobia,” a new word to describe the fear of romantic relationships.
Dateability uses the “swipe” of other apps, to scroll profiles right or left based on interest. This feature also works with buttons in case a disability prevents you from swiping. The application also has a web version which allows more things than an application in relation to certain disabilities.
Even if the creators recognize that Dateability is not yet 100% accessible, due to the cost, they highlight their customer service. Complaints receive an individualized response and particular attention is paid to “trolls” (malicious messengers). For them, the application is free and it is important that a free version remains available, even in the case of extensions.
Waiting for investors to come to Europe
Valid people register. 7% of the 8,000 current users are able-bodied people. Alexa and Jacqueline Child obviously don’t think disabled people should only date disabled people. Classic applications are not, according to them, inclusive enough at the moment.
The two sisters estimate that they can eventually reach 5 million users in the United States, knowing that the country has around 60 million people with disabilities. However, they are having difficulty finding investors for their growth and they are not the only ones. 92% of entrepreneurs with a disability say they lack financing. Alexa and Jacqueline Child, however, remain ambitious. They hope to enter the European market and expand the application to friendly relations. It is also not easy, according to them, to make friends with disabilities. According to them, part of society tends to leave the disabled on the margins and in fact isolate them. The dating app market is estimated to represent at least three billion dollars per year.