About Lovery-mail: a disabled dating site built with our community
We are a small, mostly disabled team who got tired of dating apps that treated us as a filter. So we built one where your life — not your diagnosis — leads the conversation.
Our mission for inclusive dating
Our mission is simple: to build the most respectful and accessible dating site for people with disabilities, chronic illness, and neurodivergent identities in the United States. We believe dating apps should meet our community where we already are — in our bodies, in our homes, in our own time — instead of asking us to translate ourselves into an able-bodied interface.
We reject two lazy shortcuts that dominate mainstream dating: pity and fetishization. Neither one is love. Our job is to design every interaction — onboarding, matching, messaging, reporting, even pricing — so that the whole person shows up first, and the disability shows up on your terms. Among dating sites for people with disabilities, we want to be the one you recommend to your best friend without having to explain.
We are not building a charity. We are building a community where disabled people fall in love on a platform that finally respects how we actually live.
How Lovery-mail began
Lovery-mail started in 2022 with a group chat between four friends — two wheelchair users, one autistic software engineer, and a Deaf ASL teacher — who were all, separately, exhausted by mainstream dating apps. We kept comparing notes on the same wound: the second we mentioned a chair, a cane, a cochlear implant, or a stim, the conversation ended.
We started sketching what a better experience would look like. Not “a niche app,” which felt patronizing, but a full-featured platform where accessibility and anti-fetishization were not features — they were the foundation. Six months of community interviews, three beta cohorts, and a lot of rewriting later, Lovery-mail launched in early 2023.
Today our team includes disabled product designers, neurodivergent engineers, D/deaf community advisors, and a rotating member advisory board that reviews every major product decision. We are small on purpose — small enough that every report reaches a human on the safety team, and every feature request goes through people who understand the stakes.
The values we lead with
Three non-negotiables that shape every decision, from onboarding copy to moderation policy.
Authenticity over performance
You should never have to mask, downplay, or translate yourself to get a match. Our profiles reward specificity, not polish.
Accessibility as the baseline
Screen readers, captions, keyboard nav, plain language, and high contrast ship free to every member on day one — not behind a paywall.
Anti-fetishization, enforced
Devotee accounts are removed at sign-up and on report. We publish quarterly moderation transparency reports so you can see the numbers.
Our commitments by the numbers
The receipts behind the promises. Figures drawn from our 2026 community transparency report.
Voices from the community
We build with, not for. Here is how one member described the difference.
I have used three disabled dating sites before this one. Lovery-mail is the first that felt like it was built by people who actually know what it feels like to disclose on date two. The moderation is real, the captions are real, and the people are real. That is a very short list in this space.
Our accessibility pledge
Four promises we test against every release. Read how it works and our safety and privacy commitments for the technical details.
Tested with real assistive tech users
Every quarter, NVDA, JAWS, and VoiceOver users run a paid audit of the site. We publish what failed and what we fixed.
Plain language, no jargon
Policies, pricing, and settings read at a 7th-grade level. If a new member cannot understand a feature, we rewrite it.
Keyboard-first, mouse-optional
Every action — match, message, report, delete — is reachable by keyboard with visible focus states. Always.
Community-led roadmap
Our member advisory board reviews accessibility tickets monthly and has veto power on features that break their workflows.