The thing is that this kind of thing works for people who don’t know better. I have spoken to dudes who like the abstract notion of Musk being a gamer, probably because it wasn’t apparent to them that his Path of Exile account was so obviously boosted. Similarly, a script-kiddie can seem like a skilled programmer to people who have little knowledge of programming

I’ve watched/played/read things I wouldn’t have discovered if there hadn’t been masses of people crying “woke” about them; there was a period where it was a really useful recommendation engine, because they’d be especially pissy if high quality stuff was woke. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work as well anymore, because “woke” is increasingly meaningless

The person you’re replying to includes friends in the “so too will others [love you]”, and I think that may have been a part of their wider point — that putting romantic love on a pedestal is often how we end up blocking ourselves off from love.

I apologise if I have misinterpreted what you are considering when you say “there’s a good chance they’ll never find love in their whole lives”, but this appeared to me like you may not be considering platonic love in making this statement. Being single for life doesn’t mean that someone will never find love.

I don’t wish to seem like I’m sidestepping the crux of your point though, because I wholly agree that it’s difficult to be single in a world that does tend to put romantic love on a pedestal. Even if an individual is able to break themselves out of that toxic mindset, there are many who will make you feel broken for not having, or not wanting a partner. A friend who didn’t have family was once in hospital following a severe accident, and she wasn’t allowed any visitors, because despite the fact that I was the closest thing to family she had, I was “just a friend”. It means that even if you live a life full of love, you will be made to feel like it’s not enough, and that sucks.

I possibly disagree — I’m a part time wheelchair user (as well as other disability related devices/aids) and I’m always fascinated by how dynamic and relative the concept of “accessibility” is, even if we’re only considering the perspective of one person. For example, for me, using my wheelchair often means trading one kind of pain for another, and depending on specific circumstances, that might not be worth it. Being disabled often forces you to get creative in hacking together many different solutions, balancing the tradeoffs such that the “cost” of using one tool is accounted for by the benefits of another. I wish I could recall some specific examples to share with you, but I have seen friends be incredibly inventive in using regular items in a context that makes them into accessibility devices, if that makes sense.

This is all to say that expensive hardware, learning curves, unpleasant tradeoffs like friction of wearing — all of these things are core to my experience of most accessibility devices I’ve ever used. For any prospective accessibility device, the key question is “given the various costs and inconveniences, are the benefits of this thing worth it?”. Even without knowing much about this specific device, I would wager that for some disabled people, it absolutely would be net helpful.

That being said, you raise a good point, in that “accessibility” is often used as marketing hype, and in its worst form, this looks like disabled people’s experiences being exploited to develop and sell a product that doesn’t actually care about being accessible, so long as it has the appearance of such for investors. I’m not saying that’s what this product is doing, but certainly I am primed to be wary of stuff like this.

Even besides the exploitative instances that I allude to, you’re right to draw attention to existing products on the market. It’s possible that some disabled people struggle to make use of devices that would be “good enough” for most (and maybe these people are who this new device is aimed at helping), but with accessibility stuff, it’s far too easy for well-meaning people to jump to making new gadgets or tools, instead of meaningfully examining why the existing “good enough” solutions are inaccessible for some. A specific example that’s coming to mind is someone I met who had a super high tech prosthetic limb that was so hilariously impractical compared to her existing options that this new one literally never got used. She said that it’s a shame that such an expensive bit of kit is made functionally useless by much more basic designs, but she’s learned that excited engineers are rarely receptive to being told about the practical problems with their new devices.

TL;DR: i think your instinct to be cautious about invoking accessibility is wise, though my own caution comes from a different context

Edit: I watched the video and I feel less dubious of this device after learning that this particular project arose following an email from someone who was mute and would find something like this useful. It helps that CharaChorder’s chording keyboards are established (albeit super niche) products, and this project is less about a fancy new device, and more like “chording keyboards like ours allows for faster typing than any other method, with training. Maybe this means it could be an effective text-to-speech input method. Let’s find out”.