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April 30, 2009

ThisAbility #25: Love Connection

Posted by Aaron Broverman at 09:00 AM ET

Today, just call me Chuck Woolery.

It seems like everyone has a pipeline for finding love online. The jews have JDate,christian values are covered by places like Christian Mingle and even cheaters have place to go at the controversial and highly publicized Ashley Madison Agency.

Online is also an important venue where many disabled daters believe they can leave their various limitations behind and just be themselves. Some choose to secretly assume the guise of able-bodied avatars on the popular online MMORPG Second Life and play out their fantasies that way, while others peruse the chatlines and profiles on various dating sites just for them.

Today, I'm assuming the role of the famed talkshow host, by running down what's out there online for disabled daters of all stripes, hoping one of you will find your own Love Connection.

Dating 4 Disabled

PROS: They have an internal instant message, blog and email system. There are plently of people with all types of disabilities from mostly the U.S. and the U.K. with Canada and parts of Asia bringing up the rear, so you can meet, date and network with people from all over the world. You can specify not just your disability, but also your level of mobility. This is an important distinction that makes sure all disabled people on the site are not painted with the same brush and adds a level of discernment for users looking for a mobility level similar to, or above their own. Also, there are many profiles featuring able-bodied people who are attracted to people with disabilities. (Hardly in an X-filesian way, but they are out there and they're not just fetishists or devotees).

CONS: Mixed in with people who have documented disabilities, are people who list their disability as, "Obesity" or "diabetes". Though I acknowledge that diabetes can lead to disabilities like blindness and amputation, last time I checked diabetes is a disease, not a disability. I also don't consider a weight problem a disability, but I know it can lead to diseases. I'm not a huge fan of huge people taking advantage of supports designed for genuinely disabled people. For example, handicap parking and scooters to get around. (Someone had to say it.) Also, there are way too many people looking for friendship or chat on this dating site, which may be indicative of the struggle of some people with disabilities for true socialization beyond their computer screens. I couldn't tell if any of the airbrushed hotties on the front page are actually disabled. As an added bonus, the orange page layout is truly eye constricting.

EnableLove

PROS: EnableLove offers the ability to search for your potential love connection to great specificity, including disability, mobility level, age, location, marital status and type of relationship. You can also pinpoint the various attributes of a partner, like religon, marital status and whether they have children. The site seems much more focused on encouraging its members to take their relationships offline and into the real world. It doesn't just accept disabilities, but markets itself towards people with other "Life Challenges" and diseases, thereby publicly broadening its reach past just disabilities and avoiding false advertising.

CONS: The profile layout is sparse and impersonal and comes across much more as a list of criteria than an actual story that reveals something about the person. In the profile details, members can list their full postal code, which in the age of Mapquest could be a stalker's paradise.

Soulful Encounters

PROS: Soulful Encounters takes the focus away from the disability starting with the name and stopping with the fact that it truly is a site managed by people with disabilities, for people with disabilities. They present themselves as a support group for the newly minted members of the disability community and parents of kids with disabilities. The site has numerous forums and chatrooms on any topic imaginable. The profiles are set up much like a Myspace page, with imported videos, graphics and a comments page. The customization level is unparalleled.

CONS: It's the type of site where members run the risk of spending their days getting lost behind a computer screen and never meeting their matches in real life. It tackles so many issues and tries to serve so many types of members that finding a realistic love match could easily be lost among those who just want to chat as friends, or those who aren't currently single. Its "Differently Abled" terminology is a little too much of a politically correct cliche for my taste.

Disabled Dating

PROS: This is the disabled community's answer to eHarmony. Their search program promises to take your character and values criteria and finds your match among the 5 million members they claim in their database. They report pinpoint accuracy and unlike eHarmony, they don't screen out the gay population and 5% of the people that use their site aren't unmatchable, so I'd at least have better luck here than I did on the real eHarmony.

CONS: The other sites listed above are free, while this one you have to pay for if you want anything more than a trial membership (receiving messages). Truly, whatever horse you bet on for a longterm relationship, has real money riding on it here. Plus, the site skews to an older, more clean cut crowd, but if that's your style, by all means...

Love Byrd

PROS: Turn! Turn! Turn! To everything there is a season...WAIT! STOP! that's The Byrds not Love Byrd. Love Byrd is like dating with a cyber coach at your side. While it features internal email, blogs and instant messaging, there's also a dating column written by a journalist named Tiff Carlson who happens to be a quadriplegic. I a dating etiquette guide for men and women and a Dear Abby-like advice column called, "The View". The beauty is, it's all accessible while you're chatting up your latest catch, so if you need to look something up, just scroll down the sidebar.

CONS: The interface is complicated and busy. I also had a strange sense that I had stepped into Oprah's "Remembering Your Spirit" segment. Everything seemed particularly geared to a middle-aged female audience. Sometimes there is so much instruction and advice, that actually taking that first step in meeting your match can seem very overwhelming because every little nuance in the dating game is intellectualized. This site is suffering from a serious case of T.M.I.

Hopefully, that was enough of a primer on the online disabled dating scene to help you make a Love Connection--Happy Hunting! As for me, as Chuck Woolery use to say before a commercial break, "I'll be back in two and two!"

Aaron is a freelance journalist living in Toronto. His work has appeared in Financial Post Business, Investment Executive Newspaper, and TV Week Magazine, along with Askmen.com. He is a regular contributor to Abilities Magazine and is currently plotting a weekly web comic called GIMP, with artist Jon Duguay, about a handicap school bus driver who wakes up after a crash to find he's the last able-bodied person on earth — and he's being hunted.

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