Filtered Out: Disability Disclosure Practices in Online Dating Communities

In this work, we sought to understand the experiences and disability disclosure preferences of adults with and without disabilities who have dated online. Our 91 survey respondents expressed varying opinions about the need for potential partners to disclose disability status when online dating depending on the nature or perceived severity, with “visible” disabilities carrying a higher expectation of upfront disclosure than “invisible” disabilities. Many disabled respondents also described proactively disclosing as a technique to filter potential connections. Our findings suggest that individuals with disabilities must perform additional labor and navigate complex group norms in pursuit of personal connection. We advocate that the social computing research community consider how these processes are driven by both societal expectation and the constraints of online dating platforms. We then offer design considerations and open questions as a means to extend social computing study at the intersection of online dating and disability studies.