Dateability: The Dating App for People with Disabilities with Jacqueline & Alexa Child

James Berges 00:01 
Let's face it, dating is hard enough, let alone with a disability. There are over a billion people today with disabilities worldwide, yet they're often overlooked in the dating app world. Today, we're diving into a story that's changing that narrative. 

Jacqueline Child 00:18 
We're really trying to fight all of those stereotypes and the stigmas and beliefs because disability does not discriminate. It can happen at any moment, at any time. And as you mentioned, most people will age into disability if they are fortunate enough to live a lengthy life. 

Mai Ling Chan 00:39 
Welcome to the Exceptional Leaders Podcast. I'm Mai Ling Chan, and together with James Berges, we're getting you top tips and resources for building and scaling your disability -focused offerings, straight from the forefront of disability advocacy and leadership. 

James Berges 00:56 
Welcome back to Exceptional Leaders, I'm James, and currently Mai Ling is out doing an amazing job presenting in India and Dubai, but today I'm excited to bring you a conversation redefining inclusive dating. 

James Berges 01:08 
Our guests are sisters Alexa and Jaclyn Child, they're co -founders of an app called Datability. It's the first truly inclusive dating app for individuals with disabilities. Alexa, a public interest attorney, and Jaclyn, who lives with a chronic illness, combine their unique perspectives to create a platform that goes beyond matchmaking, but builds community and encourages people to openly list their disabilities on their dating profiles, 

James Berges 01:34 
which is much different from the landscape we see today. And I should know, as a single 34 year old on dating apps myself, let me tell you, the complaints about these apps being a circus are valid, the incentives often favor keeping you swiping, giving you a shallow sense of endless choice, or let's face it, just leading to burnout. 

James Berges 01:55 
But it's not all bad, of course, you know, several of my friends have gotten married after being on these apps. But imagine on top of all these complexities, feeling worried that you need to disclose your disability and holding your breath to see if it's a deal breaker for the other person. 

James Berges 02:11 
That's a lived reality for many people. But in this episode, you'll learn how that's all changing. You'll learn about how ableism on mainstream dating apps inspired Datability's creation, the challenges of disclosure and internalized ableism in dating with disabilities, how Datability is changing societal perceptions and fostering dignity. 

James Berges 02:31 
And Jacqueline and Alexa's idea for a tech startup and how they built this all without a technical background, which to me is amazing. And it's never been more possible. You'll also hear some success stories, because what's better than a successful love story? 

James Berges 02:46 
So whether you're an entrepreneur person with a disability advocate or just interested in inclusive tech, this conversation will have you smitten. So let's dive in and explore how Alexa and Jacqueline are revolutionizing inclusive dating. 

James Berges 02:59 
It's time to swipe right on equality. Today we're joined by sisters Alexa and Jacqueline Child, co -founders of Datability, the first truly inclusive dating app for individuals with disabilities. Alexa, a public interest attorney, and Jacqueline, who lives with chronic illness, combined their unique perspectives to create a platform that goes beyond matchmaking. 

James Berges 03:24 
Datability aims to change societal perceptions and foster dignity in the disabled community. Let's explore their journey in revolutionizing the world of inclusive dating. Jacqueline and Alexa, thank you for being on the Exceptional Leaders Podcast. 

Jacqueline Child 03:37 
Thank you so much for having us. 

James Berges 03:39 
Absolutely. So let's take it back. Jacqueline, I know on your website you've mentioned that dateability was born out of your personal experience with discrimination on mainstream dating apps. I know dating from personal experience can be a mess, especially in the online world, swiping, disappointment. 

James Berges 03:57 
How much do I tell upfront? How much do I disclose? I would love for you to share your backstory that made you realize the urgent need for a platform like dateability. 

Jacqueline Child 04:07 
Thank you for asking. So we created Datability after my years and years of discouraging experiences. I faced a lot of abelination on the mainstream dating apps. I was diagnosed with chronic illness as a teenager and that led me to being disabled and with rejection after rejection. 

Jacqueline Child 04:31 
And that really affected my self -esteem. I began to experience a lot of internalized ableism and I felt that after so many people telling me that I was a burden and that I really wasn't lovable, I began to feel that. 

Jacqueline Child 04:47 
And that is a hard feeling to have about yourself. And so after those experiences, I had always wished that there was a place for me and to meet people like me. And I couldn't believe that there was never anything legitimate out there. 

Jacqueline Child 05:03 
And I, over the years, had expressed that to Alexa. And then finally in October of 2021, after making this decision to get a life -changing procedure, we decided that we were gonna build that space and create that inclusive and safe space that I was looking for. 

Jacqueline Child 05:23 
And then we quickly found out millions of other people are also looking for it. 

James Berges 05:28 
That's amazing. And thank you for sharing your story, Jacqueline. I mean, you think about all these different niches for different dating profiles, like Christian Mingle, farmers only, but as Diego Mariscal, someone on our podcast a couple of weeks ago, actually mentioned that people with disabilities is the billion strong minority. 

James Berges 05:46 
I love that phrasing because it's not really a minority that if you think of the hidden disabilities and all types of different disabilities, and the fact, well, we're all at one point, depending on how you define disability going to have a disability. 

James Berges 06:00 
And there was nothing made for that niche. And so I really respect that you took the need and that's usually where great businesses are born from. 

Jacqueline Child 06:10 
And I do feel like that the disability community is often the forgotten minority or a group of people. There is such a push for inclusion and diverse businesses and diverse efforts. And the world has forgotten that disability is the largest minority and that we are a group of over a billion people. 

Jacqueline Child 06:34 
And I think that if once you hit disability, you will cover all the other marginalized communities because disability is so intersectional. 

James Berges 06:46 
Absolutely. And Alexa, as Jacqueline's sister, I'm sure you've, it's an interesting dynamic being co -founder sisters. As I'm talking to you, you're both sitting together. And I imagine you've been an advocate for your sister in some parts of this journey going through. 

James Berges 07:04 
Jacqueline, I know you mentioned other podcasts have multiple surgeries, include, you know, just, just the psychological aspects of dealing with disability as well as the physical. But I'm interested, Alexa, from your perspective, how your path into law, your public interest lawyer, did that go with your life experience? 

James Berges 07:24 
Was it shaped by your experience growing up around helping others? Or how does that kind of inform your, how you started dateability with your sister? 

Alexa Child 07:35 
That's a good question. And it's not something I've ever really thought about. I've always wanted to help people like from an early age. My name is Gerard from Alexander, which is defender of man. And so I think that's very, I was named appropriately because that is just who I am to the poor. 

Alexa Child 07:52 
But my career definitely plays a role with dateability. I work with marginalized, vulnerable communities. I see how the world treats these people from a different perspective than dating and socially, but still I see that there's a lot of discrimination like through every facet of life. 

Alexa Child 08:12 
And I think that it just, my desire to help people led me to suggest creating this app and my desire to help Jacqueline. She's my best friend and she's one of the best people I know, but all the discrimination and sadness that she was experiencing made me really sad. 

Alexa Child 08:29 
And it was sad to watch and I knew she wasn't alone and anyone would be lucky to date her. And so the fact that she had so much trouble was mind boggling. But I knew that if we created a space for her only like really fostered the environment and culture that we want to date in, she'll be successful as will others. 

James Berges 08:48 
Yeah. So it's a ripple of impact. Like sometimes they'll start from the personal, sometimes it starts. I was just curious, maybe you're already interested in public interest and social justice in some ways and they often coalesce in interesting ways. 

Alexa Child 09:04 
And yes, I went to Jesuit College for undergrad and their motto is men and women for others. I'm not a religious person, but I do believe in that. I believe that if you're born into privilege, you should use that privilege to help those that are not as fortunate. 

Alexa Child 09:17 
And so that is really what I have done my entire career. 

James Berges 09:21 
Now, you've both spoken about how society often views disabled individuals as broken and that internalized ableism that you felt. So tell me, how is dateability working to change this narrative and what's the broader societal impact or even just dating impact you want to have for people in the disability community? 

Jacqueline Child 09:41 
We see these stereotypes, of course, within our community and outside of our community, and we really want to change these opinions for both the disabled community and the non -disabled community. Some of the feedback we get stems in internalized ableism about, well, either these people are too attracted to be disabled, or this person's not disabled enough to be on a platform for disabled people. 

Jacqueline Child 10:13 
And we're really trying to fight all of those stereotypes and the stigmas and beliefs, because disability does not discriminate. It can happen at any moment, at any time. And as you mentioned, most people will age into disability if they are fortunate enough to live a lengthy life. 

Jacqueline Child 10:32 
So we really want people to get comfortable with disability and talking about it. The more we normalize it, the more people will feel comfortable talking about their own experiences with disability, the more comfortable people will be around disability. 

Jacqueline Child 10:47 
And so I really think that us being so open about why we created DATability and our users and their stories, the more we can foster this inclusive environment. I think that education starts at a really, should start at a really young age. 

Jacqueline Child 11:05 
And when we're teaching about inclusion and diversity should include disability. So that when people do go into the age of dating, they're not freaked out by seeing someone who's disabled, because that is really the experience that myself and so many others have experienced, is that people are freaked out because they don't know anything about it. 

Jacqueline Child 11:29 
And there's so many assumptions and the lack of representation in the media and in the TV and film of disabilities is, it's just, it's not proportionate to the amount of people who experience disability or chronic illness. 

Jacqueline Child 11:46 
And so as we're being as open and honest and vulnerable as we can so that people get a little more comfortable. 

Alexa Child 11:55 
I think we also want to remind our users and everyone how diverse disability is. When we first launched, we would see some rhetoric about how if somebody was living with chronic pain, they wouldn't want to date another disabled person because they wouldn't want them to have to go through what they were going through, that they couldn't imagine dating somebody who also had chronic pain. 

Alexa Child 12:15 
And disability doesn't always mean you're in chronic pain. It can really be a psychiatric disability. It can be an intellectual disability. Even physical disabilities don't always manifest with pain. 

Alexa Child 12:25 
And so opening up the world's eyes to the fact that it's so diverse and that it can look so many different ways, even the same diagnosis can look a million different ways, I think is really helpful to educating our users and kind of overcoming that ableism. 

James Berges 12:44 
Hmm. Yeah, I was going to ask about that because it's interesting to, yeah, the huge umbrella of disabilities, like there's so many different kinds and not, we kind of get as a society, this idea of just, you know, the ADA or whatever, the wheelchair symbol. 

James Berges 13:00 
And you're like, Oh, you know, you're in a wheelchair. Like that's the most obvious thing, but there's so many different types of disabilities of different levels and spectrums. And so when you started dateability, were you focused on, I'm curious, uh, if you focused on one type of disability or like, how did you go to market with the idea, was it only for people with disabilities or did you let other people who didn't identify as having disabilities, 

James Berges 13:25 
you know, like, where do you start with getting users in that way? 

Alexa Child 13:30 
We want it to be fully inclusive and disability and chronic illness is such a spectrum that we had users asking us, oh, do I qualify? You know, can I join? And those aren't the kinds of kinds of questions we really want people to be asking. 

Alexa Child 13:43 
We just want people to be open to dating somebody with a disability. We want people to be respectful and understanding. And so we allow non -disabled people on our app. And about seven percent of our user base is not disabled. 

Alexa Child 13:56 
A lot of them are allies and advocates or have some kind of professional experience with disability. But some people are just more open minded than your average person and more open minded than people that Jacqueline was coming across on the other apps. 

Alexa Child 14:09 
So we really targeted like a wide net. And I can let Jacqueline talk about our first month. 

Jacqueline Child 14:16 
Yeah, we, we just wanted as many people out there too, that could potentially want to use dateability to know about dateability. So before we launched, I made a list of so many influencers with, you know, or social media content creators with all diverse disabilities. 

Jacqueline Child 14:36 
And we would just send these emails out and ask for people to post on their Instagram about dateability. And that's exactly what people did. People were really welcoming and willing to help us spread the word. 

Jacqueline Child 14:50 
And I would say that the majority of our users have a physical disability and a chronic illness. And I do think that that is consistent with what disability looks like, especially in this country. There's over, you know, 100 million people with chronic illness. 

Jacqueline Child 15:06 
So it makes sense that that does make up the bulk of our user base. 

James Berges 15:12 
Mm -hmm. And it's like more personal to maybe what you know, I mean, and makes sense to go after. Yeah, that's cool. So you went after it. I like as my marketer hat, you know, that's my kind of my full -time job is marketing. 

James Berges 15:26 
I'm like, okay, that's pretty genius to go for influencers because dating is such a consumer -centric where, you know, meet the people where they are. And if I'm swiping on dating apps, I'm probably also swiping on TikTok or Instagram. 

James Berges 15:39 
You know, we could talk about a whole other thing about TikTok has reframed disability and neurodiversity movement. But I think mostly for better, it's giving people more access and feeling resonance with people like them. 

James Berges 15:52 
Sometimes there's some misinformation on there like, oh, I must have ADHD because sometimes I fidget. It's like, well, I don't know, maybe. So, you know. 

Jacqueline Child 16:03 
Because it's like you have this one like quirk and people are like, oh, did you know that that probably means you're you have autism. And it's like, you know, an autism diagnosis takes a lot of effort and it's a lot more than having this one little characteristic. 

Jacqueline Child 16:22 
So I see you there. 

James Berges 16:25 
Yeah, it's like I didn't know I had all these things, but for some people, it's actually really eye -opening and can put them on a path to getting an actual diagnosis, which can be helpful. Are you looking to go beyond your degree and expand your impact? 

James Berges 16:41 
Whether you're a clinician or educator, you can leverage your skills outside direct services. Maybe you want to break into the exciting world of health and ed tech, or maybe you're interested in carving your own path and digital entrepreneurship. 

James Berges 16:52 
Either way, you'll find a supportive community and resources at slptransitions .com. Inside, you'll find my personal tips for mastering your mindset in the face of transition, trust me, I've been there, and inspiring stories of people who've made the leap. 

James Berges 17:06 
You'd be surprised how much your experience translates to other fields. To find out how, join other movers and shakers at slptransitions .com. Now let's get back to the amazing interview. So that was the marketing part. 

James Berges 17:23 
We have some listeners who are aspiring entrepreneurs. Maybe they're coming from non -technical backgrounds. Most of them probably are not coming from technical backgrounds. And I'm looking at your CVs and I'm not seeing a real technical background or traditional business background. 

James Berges 17:42 
Tell me a little bit about how did you go from idea to actually launching a technical, well an app doesn't seem very non -technical. Seems like you need that technical shots, yeah. 

Alexa Child 17:54 
Yeah, I have no technical skill at all, but, you know, Jacqueline's in the hospital recovering. We came up with this idea, I Googled, how do you build an app? I found that you can go on Upwork and get a developer coder. 

Alexa Child 18:07 
We met somebody that didn't pan out, but it gave us time, like, and talking and networking to figure out what we were looking for. And then we kind of, by having stance, came across a consulting firm out here in Colorado that does technological development and software development, and they helped bring our first version of the app and several iterations of that afterwards to life and really brought our vision to life. 

Alexa Child 18:32 
We took all aspects of what we liked from the other apps and gave it our own flair, what we wanted it to look like. And we basically, you know, made these wireframes in Photoshop and in Canva and sent it to our tech team. 

Alexa Child 18:46 
We are now with an in -house tech team that we were introduced to by a mutual friend. And so really, it takes time and it's a process. And the app is still becoming more sophisticated. It will go through a complete rehaul towards the end of the year. 

Alexa Child 19:01 
And so there's a lot of room to grow, but we're on the right path. And I think it's really a lot of instinct. Our dad is self -made. He has that entrepreneurial spirit. So we definitely inherited that from him. 

Alexa Child 19:15 
And I think what helps us grow is our story. We've gotten a ton of press. The first week we launched, we were featured in the Washington Post. We've been in Forbes on NPR. We've just had so much press coverage. 

Alexa Child 19:28 
And so that helps bring that attention. And so we can really kind of focus on the technical side and let our story speak for itself. 

Jacqueline Child 19:37 
Yeah, it is a learning experience, and we're still learning. But like Alexa said, it was very instinctual. And we knew what we liked and what we didn't like from other apps, we had used dating apps a lot, and just other social networking apps as well. 

Jacqueline Child 19:56 
And so we and so we knew it could be done, we didn't know how quite how to get there. But with the help of our community, we have really been able to grow and change dateability and really make it the app that we envisioned. 

James Berges 20:10 
I love that the power of community and story in the modern world really cuts through the noise and as I understand you didn't take funding for the app too. It was all bootstrapped. Is that true? 

Alexa Child 20:23 
Yeah, for better or for worse, the gaps in fundraising with when you're a disabled founder, I mean, you're a female founder, and then when you're both disabled and female, it's a large gap. We did try to fundraise and so much of the venture capital world is not disabled and can't appreciate what it's like to date as a disabled person and can't appreciate the problem that we're solving. 

Alexa Child 20:48 
And so, you know, right now, we're not fundraising, but it is largely bootstrapped. You know, our parents were very supportive, we had some angel investors, and they helped us. But like our tech team, you know, they're dedicated, they believe in our mission. 

Alexa Child 21:02 
And so, yeah, we watch other apps get all this funding before anything's even created. And so it's gonna be frustrating because we would love to have additional financial support. But right now, it's on the formal fundraising process is on pause because it can be bad for mental health. 

Alexa Child 21:19 
Yeah. 

Jacqueline Child 21:20 
And, and I like to look at what other experts in this field are saying. And they're, you know, sometimes it can be discouraging, but a lot of times it can be encouraging. And people say, you know, linear growth is totally fine. 

Jacqueline Child 21:35 
It doesn't always have to be this exponential growth. I think that we were to come into, let's say $5 million tomorrow, we probably would not know what to do with all of that right away. And it would take a lot of strategic planning on what we can do with that. 

Jacqueline Child 21:51 
Especially as, you know, we have a very, very small team and we don't necessarily need millions of dollars to be successful as we have proved thus far. 

James Berges 22:03 
Hmm. Yeah. And on the contrary, sometimes you see companies that raise raise raise money and they're like not profitable for years. Like they're beholden to stakeholders and, you know, I guess there's pros and cons to both. 

James Berges 22:16 
You can grow faster and bigger, but also a lot of stress trying to pay back that money. Ultimately, you're not your own boss completely. You're beholden to investors. So that all makes sense. Actually, to me, mention Diego again, but he's on top of mind, Pasquez. 

James Berges 22:34 
He runs Together International, which is a fund specifically for disability focused startups. So maybe you've heard of that one, but yeah. 

Jacqueline Child 22:44 
back in April in Atlanta and so I think that that's one of the best things to come out of dateability is the community that we have built and grown. You know personally I had never really had a community of disabled people. 

Jacqueline Child 23:00 
I was in my bubble of the people I grew up with and the people that were immediately around me and that did not include any disabled people and through this we've met with hundreds of people all across the world with so many diverse disabilities and the beautiful thing is that we can all relate to one another and we can all be a resource for one another. 

James Berges 23:23 
Absolutely. Awesome. So let's talk about success stories. Real quick. If you know any top of mind, tell us what has happened, not just on the business side, but the actual users that you're impacting, if you have one that comes to mind. 

Alexa Child 23:39 
We have almost 25 ,000 users and several success stories. There's a lot that come to mind. We're very fortunate that our users have shared their stories with us. One couple, they just moved in together as of last week, but they matched with each other in November of 2022. 

Alexa Child 23:55 
So right after we launched, there were probably a thousand people on the app. They lived 900 miles apart. They met on the app, did long distance, and now they live together in the same city. So, and they're going on almost two years. 

Alexa Child 24:06 
And they said that they would have never met each other had it not been for dateability. And we see those stories a lot. One other couple, they're both on the autism spectrum, but they happen to live 30 minutes away from each other. 

Alexa Child 24:17 
So they're already living in the same metropolitan area. And what we were starting to notice and see is that for us and for our app, it's really quality over quantity. And I think part of the issue is that when dating apps first started, their game is a message that you need as eight million users in order to be successful. 

Alexa Child 24:37 
And I'm not sure I agree with that. We had 25 ,000 users and a lot of success rate. I think it helps narrow the playing field down and it kind of replicates what dating used to be like before the internet. 

Alexa Child 24:49 
And I think that can be really helpful. Of course we will one day worldwide have millions of users, but I just think from the perspective of somebody who's been on the other apps, there's a lot to go through in order to find your person that sometimes it feels like a needle in a haystack. 

Alexa Child 25:03 
And I think community specific apps are really valuable in that regard. 

Jacqueline Child 25:07 
Yeah, we love hearing about our success stories. That's really what keeps us going. The most exciting thing is that apart from one or two of our couples who have been together, everyone has a diverse disability. 

Jacqueline Child 25:22 
And that is just proof that disability is so diverse and you can relate to someone who falls under this umbrella as disabled, but has a completely different diagnosis, completely different manifestation of disability. 

Jacqueline Child 25:37 
And you still have this common ground and values and this unspoken understanding. No way it feels like to maybe be othered in the larger world. And so I really, really think it's a beautiful thing that we've been able to create with just a short amount of time and really honestly, little resources. 

James Berges 26:04 
that's it's amazing because disability is one of those things where it can feel so isolating and yeah feeling othered and so finding your community it doesn't have to be 8 million people like you said or 7 million people it can just be 25 ,000 which is still a huge number of people to connect to and so where do you see dateability going the next I don't know five years what are your goals for the app and the impact and maybe even I don't know beyond dating building community I could see like it's just like a social connection beyond dating 

Alexa Child 26:36 
Isolation is definitely a problem that's not just romantic and so we do have plans to have a platonic friendship version. Right now we have the looking for section on the app that you can say you're looking just for friendship but we want like a specific friendship algorithm as well. 

Alexa Child 26:53 
We are on track to expand globally this fall in honor of our two -year anniversary. We really want dateability to become a profitable business. We want to show that they're spending power within the disability community that a disabled entrepreneur can found a billion dollar, million dollar company and be successful and then it doesn't always have to be like medical resources or very clinical. 

Alexa Child 27:18 
It can be something like a dating app and that intimacy is valued within the disability community and we really want to be a household name. 

Jacqueline Child 27:26 
Yeah, I echo all of those things. And, you know, this has been, our goals in this have been more than just an app, and they've always been to create this movement. And so one day we wanna get our hands into policy and create marriage equality for our community and really just fight for an equitable future for the disabled community. 

James Berges 27:51 
Hmm, big, lofty, love it, lofty goals, love that. And, uh, you have, certainly have a catchy name that I think that alone is just easy to talk about, date abilities, dating with different abilities or, you know, so thank you, thank you both for sharing this story and I'll be following along and I hope our listeners will too. 

James Berges 28:13 
Where should they go to follow you along on this journey? 

Jacqueline Child 28:17 
Yeah, please follow us along on our Instagram and Facebook. That is at databilityapp, and you can check out more information and check out our blog at info .databilityapp .com. And if you're interested in downloading it, you can download it for free on iOS, Android, or sign up at databilityapp .com. 

Jacqueline Child 28:39 
And we're always here. We love hearing stories, feedback, and so please reach out with any questions or comments you may have. 

James Berges 28:49 
Amazing. We'll link those in the show notes. Oh, Jacqueline and Alexa, thank you for taking the time and thank you for making the world a more beautiful and more inclusive space. I appreciate you coming on. 

Jacqueline Child 29:00 
Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. 

Mai Ling Chan 29:03 
We hope you enjoyed this episode and invite you to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and share the show with people you think will find value from it. This helps the show a lot. Or have a great guest referral, reach out to us at xleaders at gmail .com. 

James Berges 29:19 
And if you want exclusive tips on becoming an exceptional leader, deliver straight to your inbox, just go to ExceptionalLeaders .com and sign up for our mailing list. Thanks for listening.