Dating Technologies for Disabled Peoples

A girl with blond hair, 28 years old, 165 centimeters tall, lion by the horoscope. She dreams of getting to know a guy who likes to walk outside during a good weather, and likes home comfort. In this ad for a dating site, it would seem, there is nothing unusual. Except that it is intended for a dating service for people with disabilities.

How does such an unusual site work, where the opposite side, in the literal sense of the word, cannot be seen with our own eyes? The new dating site https://tvojelaska.cz (“Your Love”) has appeared with the purpose to help people with any restrictions to find their soul mate. To get acquainted with potential applicants they are helped and trained by special coaches. The idea of ​​such an unusual dating service came into being, thanks to a couple who also got acquainted through the most ordinary dating service – the former deputy from the “Public Affairs” Cristina Mertlova (before the marriage – Kochi) and the mathematician Yakubu Mertlu. They organized this good undertaking with the support of European funds.

By the way, according to the Czech Statistical Office, there are about one million people in the Czech Republic who have mental or physical limitations, to one degree or another. According to Nevidomimezinami.cz (“Blinds among us”), there are about 100 thousand people with visual impairments in the Czech Republic, of which 10 thousand – with a severe form of it. What is the difference between dating people blind, from, so to say, normal?


“A person without visual impairments lives predominantly in visual life, that is, prefers, first of all, beauty. A blind or visually impaired person counts on other senses – hearing, touch and smell, and, of course, this limits it very much. Dating these people are, in essence, is just with anyone else. This happens in schools, at work, and, in particular, during events organized by societies that work with the visually impaired,” says Michal Kuharzh, educator and organizer of educational programs for blind people.

In the world there is a great number of dating services for various categories of minorities. https://godatenow.com/members/ allows you to find all the types of people, impaired or not. Is there a chance that such a site will take root in the Czech Republic, and is it able to solve the problems of dating people with vision impairment as such?

This problem is very important for many blind people. Many of them would very much like to get acquainted and even create a family with a man without such a restriction, that is, with the sight. For example, an acquaintance of the blind told me: “When I touch a woman’s face, I feel her nose, cheeks, mouth – these are details that I can perceive, but I cannot put them into a single whole. Thus, I can listen to her voice, breathe in her scent, and then concentrate on what this person is.” So, among the blind, acquaintance is a huge problem, and this issue is widely discussed.

And how, from the point of view of a professional educator, is it better if a person with a disability finds a healthy partner or, on the contrary, also meets a person with disabilities, who knows well what life is like with restrictions?

Speaking frankly, for a person with severe disability in sight to live with a healthy partner – it is pleasant and profitable. On the other hand, as a rule of thumb, partnership relations are established between people with the same form of vision impairment.

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