Love is blind: How is tech helping when dating with a disability?
“Voice notes were equally important: you can tell so much by hearing the timbre and sonorousness of someone’s voice.” - Rob Crossan
Modern dating apps promise connection, convenience and choice. But for many people living with a disability, the reality is far more complicated. Technology can open doors that the offline world keeps firmly shut, and yet, it can also reproduce the same misunderstandings, biases and awkward silences that shape everyday life.
In this episode of The Great RomCon?, I spoke with writer and broadcaster Rob Crossan, whose reflections on dating as a visually impaired man reveal something deeper about the way technology mediates intimacy. This is an episode about accessibility, but it’s also about status, attraction, self-esteem, and the universal desire to be seen for who you really are.
Dating apps, for many, are frictionless. Swipe, match, chat, repeat. For Rob, they were something else entirely, a lifeline as a new way to meet people.
“As a visually impaired person, internet dating was a godsend.”
For someone with ocular albinism, “I basically look Celtic, which I am. I’m like an albino in disguise”, the apps offered Rob a way to connect without the immediate visual judgments of the offline world (and a more practical way to check potential dates out). The platforms created a space for new ways of meeting people and new possibilities. What emerges is a familiar story in tech: systems designed for the ‘average’ user, with everyone else expected to adapt. Even something as simple as taking a screenshot, which allows visually impaired users to zoom in and is something that Rob would like to see brought back, has been removed from some platforms to prevent online bullying and harassment. Safety for some groups, can mean inaccessibility for others.
If apps can create moments of opportunity, they also defer a moment of truth and personal disclosure. For some, it might be, “I’m actually slightly older/shorter/less single than I said I was when we first matched.” For Rob, he sometimes found it difficult when he told his dates that he had a disability:
“Some women looked disgusted when I told them [about my disability]. The atmosphere really soured.”
Digital dating allows you to get past the first hurdle and enter the room. But it doesn’t guarantee how you’ll be received once you’re there, as you will often know so little about someone before meeting. Hopefully, their name, a rough approximation of their physical appearance and a hint of their personality. This is where the technology’s promise quietly runs into human nature. Online platforms ultimately reflect wider society and also our inner sanctum. If bias isn’t designed into the code of the platforms, then it’s carried in by the users.
One of the unfortunate impacts of online dating is the primacy of style over substance. So much is lost when we don’t interact with people face-to-face, that we cling on to a few still 2D images of potential dates. One of the subtler insights from Rob was how much of attraction exists beyond the visual.
“Voice notes were equally important: you can tell so much by hearing the timbre and sonorousness of someone’s voice.”
This chimes with the ‘sottosexual’ of Dr Bandielli, a previous RomCon guest, on finding someone’s voice attractive. In a culture obsessed with images, this feels a welcome reminder of what’s important. It is a reminder that attraction is multi-sensory, intuitive, and often resistant to tech platform optimisation. Which may explain why, despite everything, Rob still prefers IRL interaction:
“House parties are still the best place to meet people, I used to love meeting people at them.”
There’s something about unstructured, embodied interaction that no interface has yet successfully replicated. In a culture of constant evaluation and quantifiable popularity, likes, matches, and views, it’s easy to assume we are being judged all the time for our ‘social clout’. Often, we’re simply not, as Rob reminded us: “Most people [in the real world] aren’t thinking about you: they are utterly neutral.” His advice to improve your self-esteem and reduce anxiety is to, “learn to love your reflection at 4am in the bathroom mirror” - to be comfortable with oneself and our flaws. Rob jokes that he remains “annoyingly ebullient” of his own character, which is the healthy level of self-regard that many of us should aim for. There is, he acknowledges, a natural desire for validation, and social status still plays its role. But outsourcing your worth to the market of social media and dating apps is a losing game.
I also talked to Rob about the sexual politics and etiquette of dating, specifically the financial realities of dating. Men are still expected to pay, so Rob made use of affordable, familiar bars which you can feel comfortable in; picnics (romantic, but weather dependent). It’s a reminder that even in a supposedly progressive dating culture, older norms persist. Including infidelity. If technology has made meeting people easier, they’ve arguably made cheating harder. Every message leaves a trace. Every interaction a record. More analogue times afforded for deniability. In any case, from Rob’s experience, it isn’t an aspiration in any case:
“Having an affair is 10% excitement, 90% admin. It’s just not worth it.”
I also got Rob’s take on the plethora of dating apps now on the market, seemingly to cater for every whim and desire. He didn’t personally have time for apps specifically designed for disabled people, however:
“To me, it felt like segregation. Why would you want to cut yourself off from meeting people?”
What is framed as inclusion can sometimes feel like separation. Creating parallel systems, rather than a shared one. When your dating life is mediated through technology platforms, every design choice - the choice architecture - becomes a political one. Who gets to initiate (yes Bumble, I’m talking about you)? Who gets to disappear? Who gets to be desirable? Who gets to feel safe? The power dynamics and class struggle exhibited on the apps would satisfy any budding Marxist.
Rob’s reflections reminded me that technology doesn’t just facilitate relationships, it frames them. When online interaction is all intentional with little room for serendipity, it also provides the format and meaning. It sets the terms of engagement. And for many people living with a disability, those terms are still written by others.
One of the most striking parts of our conversation was Rob’s ambivalence about the digital world. He appreciates the opportunities technology offers, the ability to meet people he might never encounter offline. But he also recognises its limits. There is a loneliness that comes from being constantly ‘connected’ to people, but still feeling rarely understood. There is a fatigue that comes from performing yourself for an online audience, looking to appease their ‘Caesar Algorithm’ to get the thumbs-up to be seen. If technology is going to shape our romantic lives, we need to ask whether it is helping us become more exhibit more of the ‘human’ behaviours we profess to value - or less.
Talking to Rob made me realise that the question isn’t simply whether technology helps or hinders dating with a disability. It’s whether our digital tools are capable of reflecting the full complexity of human experience - all the nuance that we have when we communicate in person.
There have been recent studies that show that the ubiquity of AI tools to aid writing has led to a “cognitive flattening”, where people and prose start to all sound alike. The accessibility of tech is therefore not a niche concern. Something for ‘someone else’ to worry about: it is a test of whether our technologies can accommodate our physical and cognitive differences without reducing teh nuance. The field of tech-mediated romance, with all its awkwardness, hope, disappointment and joy - is one of the places where that test becomes most visible. Rob’s stories remind us that intimacy is not just about matching profiles. The question isn’t simply whether technology helps or hinders dating (with a disability or otherwise). It’s whether our tools, our tech platforms, are capable of reflecting the full complexity of human interaction. Ultimately, what people are looking for isn’t optimisation and efficiency. It’s recognition and understanding - feeling heard, and seen for who we really are.
It’s about being seen, understood, and valued. And if our technologies can’t support that, then they are failing all of us, able-bodied and tech-addicted alike.