Hi I am diving into dating apps this week. I tried Hinge they are working on there accessibility by the way I contacted them. I am looking for a dating app where you don't have to pay to set basics for preferences and you can read the full text profiles. I guess dating is a big business. But plenty of fish you have to pay for a membership to see most of the profile and tneder is a mess some say it works i say its hard to use uness you pay for it and have patience and sighted help. I mostly used the website for that. So other than those and the inaccessible bumble any other ideas? I even tried dating for disabled a while back and you would think they would be accessible but nope they are not. I am really in need of help here.
Comments
dating apps
Most apps are not accessible. Sad but there it is.
I have plenty of experience in this aarea...
Hinge has been usable recently. I wish Bumble would sort theirs out as I know a lot of people who have found some success on there but the one I keep going back to is tinder which has always been surprisingly accessible, and I've been pleasantly surprised by how many people actually do put text on their profiles as well as pictures. It's a clunky app, not just for accessibility. Occasionally it completely breaks, like a few days ago voiceover just stopped reading any of it so I deleted the app and re downloaded and it was better again. None of them are perfect, but tinder has been the one I've used the most in recent times.
re: hinge
I am working with hinge I will contact them again and see how its going on accessibility.
Match
Don't know if you're averse to going online, and I can't say if it's still accessible, but I met my wife on match.com around 12 years ago. I found the web site perfectly accessible. Lots of local folks were on it, too.
Good luck!
Bruce
Tinder Web app
For those not in the know, Tinder for quite some time now has had a Web-based version of its application that is far more accessible than its IOS counterpart. The Web app is even a PWA that can be installed as a shortcut on your desktop. It tends to work better with the Chrome browser, and can be found at https://tinder.com.
Try badoo it’s free
The app badoo is very accessible besides the pictures it’s completely accessible and the team will always consider accessibility for their blind users
dating apps since there are some that are hit and miss
I think if we are going to get these accessible we need to band together as a community and contact these companies. Plenty of fish needs to be contacted.
Traditional dating
Or you could just try dating the traditional way, i.e. going outside and meeting people in person, in real life, in the real world. Dating apps aren't the only way to meet people; if one way doesn't work for you or others, try another way. Most communities (though not all) even have in-person (or, perhaps, virtual now due to COVID-19) meet-up groups for individuals who are visually impaired or have other disabilities, so that would be a great place to start in a journey to meet new people and find someone to date. There are also matchmaking services (i.e. Talkify) and other ways of meeting new people as well. Remember that dating applications, by their very nature, are very visual things, but luckily there are plenty of apps out there, or alternative ways to use apps (like Tinder's much more accessible Web app when compared to its iOS counterpart), that there is bound to be at least one dating application that meets someone's accessibility needs.
True but...
It's funny you mention Tawkify. Most blind people aren't going to be able to afford their service. $500 a month plus whatever the date costs are. If there's a matchmaker service that isn't strictly for professionals and is affordable, I'd like to know. But I don't think Tawkify has any competition.
Supporting evidence required
What data or supporting evidence do you have for the qualifier you used in your reply to my comment? Saying that "most" blind people cannot afford a service like Talkify is inaccurate as I know a number of blind people who can, including myself, and there are lots of opportunities out there for blind people to earn a higher income if desired. In fact, I know one blind person currently making $83,000 per year, and while of course not everyone makes that much money, just because someone is visually impaired does not mean they cannot earn a salary befitting the items they wish to afford. If something is not affordable for someone that does not mean it won't be in the future, nor does it mean it's impossible for that person to make the life changes required for it to be affordable. At most, you can say there are individuals out there who wouldn't be able to afford Talkify, but no qualifier can be given here without additional evidence to support such a claim.
Regardless, a matchmaking service is just one of the alternative dating methods I mentioned in my comment, and Talkify is just one such matchmaking service; there are others, perhaps even some that are more within the budget of a prospective individual than that of Talkify.
accessibility
Maybe not about money but how easy they are to use and accessible.
dating apps
The only apps I even tried to play around with were e-harmony and Christian Mingle. Neiter was accessible enough for me to keep around, and the one match I got from Christian Mingle ended up being nothing but red flags. I've tried meet up also, but that was pretty underwhelming as well. On the whole, especially as I get older, I'm happy to just stay single, but sometimes, I think it would be nice to find someone to spend time with at the very least and expand my social circle a tad.
Christian Mingle/eHarmony and VoiceOver
I've sent Christian Mingle a long list of simple UI and VoiceOver fixes for the app, as well as resources on where to find the development resources to fix said issues. Not sure if they will take these into consideration, but they did tell me they want to make the app better. I listed the app in the AppleVis directory with the labels for the tabs along the bottom. You can use the app with VO, it just requires some workarounds and trial and error. Reading the profile text and messages was okay. Some difficulty in filling out the profile.
The eHarmony app is mostly VO accessible, however the scrolling in the messages drives me bananas. Their website is okay if you know how to set landmarks and jump around.
Good luck.
Why meet groups of disabled people?
I find this an uncomfortable comment feeding into the stereotype that blind people should date blind people. I agree people should socialise with people with common interests such as religion, music, etc, but being blind, I believe, is not a common interest. It is irrelevant. By this standard people should converge based on other arbitrary commonalities such as shoe size, year of birth or initials.
It leads into the concept of us and them, which I find very disturbing. My intention is not to offend you or those who have found love through such community but it should be recognised that there is more to this rich tapestry of life than being blind, reflected in a whole range of places people can, irrespective of disability or the lack there of.
I agree
I wouldn't not date a blind person, but I would rather not!
Dating
I think is more than most who are blind tend to meet more of them. Also in some cases dating sighted people specially women is hard. They see the blindness and not the person.
Groups for the blind are not the only dating option
Please read my original comment again, the one to which you replied. Then read it one more time, even more thoroughly. If you do, you will (hopefully) quickly realize that meeting other visually impaired people is only one of the many alternatives to online dating apps that I mentioned in the comment. The only reason I mentioned it, in fact, was because there are communities that have organized meet-up groups of those who are visually impaired, and this often tends to be an easier option for someone who is already visually impaired, but as stated it is not the only option. Honestly there is nothing wrong with meeting and attempting to date other blind people; at least the visual impairment is something that is shared between the two individuals, and thus the friendship or dating relationship may be made easier without the potential issues that may come with attempting to be friends with or date a sighted individual (or the other way around).
Regardless, however, as I stated in my original comment there are many alternatives to using online dating apps; meeting up with other blind people in real life is only one such alternative.
Yes
This tend to happen due to the fact that sometimes a group with similar interest or jobs come together. Nurses and doctors and police tend to date each other. Social workers,and psychologist.
Interesting
You are attracted to who you are attracted. Personally I'd not intentionally seek out someone with the commonality of a visual impairment as I think of it as one of the more boring parts of my character but neither would I go out of my way to avoid it. I just despise the trope that blind people go out with blind people, it's demeaning and defines us by our shitty disability rather than our wide ranging world experience. It is an artificial barrier that should be ignored... In my opinion, which will be different to others.
Anyway, gone way off topic here... However, I have been in contact with the developer of a new app, geek meet, which is based on finding romance through, in quotations, geeky interests. The App is not yet on iPhone but the developer seems keen to make it work for us and seems like a very good way of find others who like to vanish down the nerdy rabbit hole of shared cognitive passions... Which sounds much more fun that comparing war stories of an impairment.
Everyone, make sure your read this at least twice, apparently it's a new forum rule I'd not been made aware of.
Happens
FYI. When you spend more time with a particular group it tend to happens. Psychologist,social workers, counselors and so on.
Happens
FYI. When you spend more time with a particular group it tend to happens. Psychologist,social workers, counselors and so on.
Understandible
Yes, I think that boils down to the choice of who you feel comfortable socialising with. I have no blind friends IRL, which wasn't an active choice, rather I found other social groups that interested me more because we had a shared interest, first music, then writing and gaming etc... I never felt that blindness was something I could bond over. Some people can. I guess this is why I find it hard to understand. Sorry if I've caused any offence. In my view, everyone's busted up some how, on the inside or out. We have it easier in a way because at least we have a name for it. :)
Sane
When I worked as a social worker I spend time with them and not with Blind people. The majority of friends are sighted. Dating is not about whether someone is or not is blind. For me if she take care of herself emotionally and physically is what I want.
Psychologists and social workers?
we've gone down the path of trying to pigeonhole people, haven't we? let me just say, as a barrister, the last person I would want to date is another barrister! Imagine the conversations over breakfast...all about admissibility of evidence, cross-examination and quantum of damages?
I have assiduously complied with the rule of reading things twice and must say that the second reading left me no more enlightened than the first as nobody appears to have said anything too complicated. By and large I agree with oliver; but I also agree that one can meet other groups of blindies if one wishes and that this is just one of many options that the traditional dating chap (I forget their username and am not committed enough to this enterprise to look back and refresh my memory) mentioned. Wouldn't it be ironic if there were a dating app specifically for blind people that wasn't accessible?
On a serious note, I met my fiancee through eHarmony. The app was mainly accessible although there were some elements that were not great...typically the part where eHarmony asks you to rank characteristics in order of importance. I tended to find myself telling my prospective date that such things didn't work well for blindies and so would she mind awfully skipping that step? In fact, nearly everyone with whom i corresponded on eHarmony was very relaxed about skipping stuff that was not accessible. Yes it's relatively expensive but that does weed out quite a few of the nutjobs. yes it takes a while to fill in but at least that shows it's making a reasonably serious effort to try and find you matches. Someone else mentioned match.com here and that one's not bad either, though the website in my experience was considerably better than the app. This was seven or eight years ago.
wehre I think blindies fall down is they don't bother themselves with getting decent pictures. You really, really need decent pictures for a dating profile if you want sighted people to be interested. You don't have to be dashingly handsome - but make sure you have pictures in which you look reasonably smart. A picture of you lounging around in shorts and a t-shirt with islands of last night's tomato sauce down it ain't really going to cut the mustard. if you have a sighted friend you need to use that sighted friend to find a decent picture of yourself for you, or else to take one. I appeared on eHarmony in a suit in all my pictures. There was one particularly good one of me on the terrace of the House of Commons.
OK Cupid
I’m surprise nobody has mentioned OK Cupid yet. I find that one to find decently accessible
Pictures
A really good point regarding pictures... I think this is the sticking point for many of these apps, accessible or not. Firstly, we do need good photos which, as blind people we don't hoard as much as sighted counterparts so maybe being mindful of that when out with sighted friends and family on an interesting day out. The other side of this is trying to find someone of interest one very picture oriented services such as tinder where, if we're lucky, we get a couple of vague lines giving us very little insight into the person appearance or personality.
Pictures are important for our potential matches, but also for us. What someone looks like is important, even for blind people. How someone carries themselves, what they get up to, the quality of their smile, how they dress, how they take care of themselves... So there is this almost incermountable barrier to the whole thing. A picture paints a thousand words so we're already a step behind when going on a date. They have already seen us, made assertions, right or wrong, based on our images.
This suggest that the data heavy services such as EHarmony should be a better pairing for us, though we still don't have that access to images. I've had success in outsourcing to friends, having them describe the images, though this does colour the situation with their own biases.
finally there is the issue of popularity of apps. Really we want a large pool of choice. I'm not sure how popular things like POF or EHarmony are these days when compared with things like Tinder or Bumble which, as stated, are heavy on images light on data.
By chasing certain services, accessibility aside, you are already making a choice of the sort of person you will potentially date because there are certain types of people drawn to certain services based on its engagement and feature set.
What would be good, for the larger services such as Tinder, is for use to be able to have an assigned assistant, someone with limited access to ones account that can help us, almost a be my eyes situation for dating apps. Might be worth a suggestion to people like tinder and bumble who do seem open to ideas. If they can offer such accessibility setting it will help them boost their profile... See what I did there?
Re: Pictures
Interesting discussion.
I'm not on Tinder or other dating apps currently though, so I can't speak of how accessible or not these apps are.
I just wanted to say I agree with Oliver Kennett and a few others regarding this topic.
I'm blind myself and I need a sighted date/partner.
Pictures is very important and I'm still a visual person since I care about how I look/appearance, how I dress and taking care of my body etc.
I have a few friends that I trust regarding taking good pictures and also when shopping clothes.
We live in a sighted world so come on get on with it and try to adapt.
I like travelling and meeting new people and new cultures, food and drinks etc and this travelling thing is so much easier when dating a sighted person.
I also have other interests but this is the one that is most important to me when meeting a potential partner.
It would also be great if that person is fluent in English, so I can learn and improve my own English LOL.
English is not my native language, so please be patient and tolerant.
Ok, this discussion/thread is way of topic but I hope the admins will let this discussion continue since it's quite important in my opinion.
Sighted all the way
I met my current guy by walking up to him, hitting on him then kissing his cheek before he left. I wouldn't date a blind person for one definitely shallow reason. I'm not dealing with the issues we face and have to deal with whoever having the same or worse access issues. I am with my boyfriend because he and i are great together not because he's sighted. Oh and for the LGBTQ+ I'd be curious if the apps like Grindr are accessible if they have worked for you if you choose to tell us.
Thumbs up to OK Cupid
I met my wife on Ok Cupid several years ago. This was before Tinder was around. Take the rest of this with a grain of sault because I haven't used the site in a while for obvious reasons.
I liked the fact that you had a bunch of stuff to fil out. When viewing profiles there was enough text that I was able to filter out a lot of people based on what they had written. I found the website to be more usable then the app but who knows what the situation is now.
Raises another good point... Website versions
Hey, you raise yet another interesting point. Though some of the apps struggle with accessibility, tinder as an example when trying to add images, their website counterpart is usually more usable. I know bumble also has a website interface, hinge does not.
So, maybe it is worth looking at both. Sometimes with these things it works by a combination of routes, EG, website to set up your profile but easier to filter potentials via the app.
I'm doing a study about accessibility on tinder
Hi,
I am Yosephina who are doing a study with my group at Hyper Island Sweden, about digital accessibility for people with visual impairments on the dating app Tinder. We want to find better digital solutions for people with impairments on Tinder. Therefore we are looking for people that want to participate in an interview.
You don’t need to have used Tinder before but it would be nice if you have used any other online dating application or website. You need to have an interest in online dating. The interviews will preferably take place in Stockholm or online during this week. We will use the information from the interview.
The interview will only be for educational purposes (not in collaboration with Tinder) and we do not publish names, photos or other personal information. If you or anyone close to you has an interest in participating in this survey, please contact us via email: yosephina.huwae@hyperisland.se
Hi, who is your contact at…
Hi, who is your contact at Hinge? I am reactivating my account and can't even get past the screen where I am entering all my info (gender, sexuality, etc) because i can't type into any text boxes. Double tapping doesn't work. I am extremely frustrated; please let me know if you have any contacts/ideas.