It has long been wondered whether love is truly blind, and ITV’s latest commission, Blind Matchmakers, which starts tonight (18th November), really puts that to the test. Unlike the famous Netflix show ‘Love Is Blind,’ this new dating reality show, which marks the start of Disability History Month in the UK, enlists the expert opinions of three matchmakers who are blind and tasked with helping contestants, who are also visually impaired, navigate the world of dating.

Unlike other reality TV dating programmes that have taken a more surface-level, superficial approach to ‘blind dating’, Blind Matchmakers takes things a step further by focusing on the non-sighted aspects of dating on the part of the matchmakers, as well as the contestants. Because their matchmaking is entirely auditory and intuitive, and they can’t see their clients, they rely on voice, personality, confidence, sense of humour, etc.

What is really exciting about the premise of the show is that from the outset, the panel of matchmakers is shown to be incredibly diverse, from the visually impaired Welsh drag queen Venetia Blind to Joy Addo, who also represents Black motherhood. I had the opportunity to speak with the show’s award-winning producer, Jessica Mitchell, to learn about her conception of the show.

ITV

A conversation about love and attraction with a blind rapper on a different show sparked Jessica’s curiosity about what it’s like to date as a blind person. During the development stage of the show, Jessica had met and spoken with 100 blind people from around the world, including Claire Sisk. Claire, the third matchmaker and main presenter, is a self-proclaimed matchmaking expert, as well as a presenter and disability advocate.

Following dozens of conversations with single blind people and those who were partnered, Jessica quickly realised that blind people were rarely listened to, especially when the topic came to dating. Jessica stated that it was important that media industry workers like herself are “giving people the platform to do what they would like to do.” Jessica, whose production company is called Different Productions, focuses on producing inclusive programming, such as a music show centred around the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. She also advises disabled people looking to get into the media industry that they should “find [their] talent and double down.”

So much of what we know and think about dating, relationships, romance and love is centred around the visual aspects of a person, leading to a presumption that those who are visually impaired would not have an opinion and would just accept what they are given. An erroneous assumption that I have discussed in my own work with my advocacy and awareness platform, The Triple Cripples, because we understand the expectation is often that disabled people should be ‘grateful’ for getting any attention at all. By placing three wonderfully diverse blind people as dating experts, Jessica and the show encourage us as the audience to recognise that there is a wealth of knowledge and wisdom to be gained from disabled people. And it also banishes any notion of judging someone by how they appear.

Initially, participants meet with the matchmaking panel and discuss their love lives to date and why they are now seeking the guidance of the experts. The hosts deliberate and set about creating dating pairs, or trios, that they think should go on a date and explore further. The contests, both for the sighted and the visually impaired, rely on their other senses to get to know one another and give the matchmakers a chance to start pairing based on chemistry.