The past few weeks I’ve been focusing on the topic of sex and disabled people’s experiences of sex. A couple of weeks ago I posted a survey to support my research into sexual wellbeing of disabled people. The link to this survey can be found here: sexual wellbeing of disabled people 

Sex survey results

Firstly, I would like to thank you all for your wonderfully honest responses. It was really eye opening and quite moving to hear some of your experiences. There were some positive things to take away from this. However, an alarming number of responders appear to be unsatisfied with their sex lives. Most of the negative responses were due to physical barriers in the bedroom. Frequently mentioned were pain, fatigue, hypermobility and sensation loss. I believe that a lot of these barriers are possible to mitigate with creative techniques, aids and toys.  

I spent a long time trawling the online sex shops desperately hoping to find some inclusive representation. Unfortunately, I found that there are very few products aimed at disabled people. When I searched “disabled” into the Lovehoney search box, there was a small list of products that came up. This gave me some hope! I reached out to Lovehoney with some enquiries regarding these products. This is a little summary of what they had to say.

1. Have these products been designed with or alongside disabled people? 

Lovehoney stated that none of their products were designed specifically for disabled people as some conditions are invisible. They said that the various differences mean that they would be unable to manufacture an item that only suits a handful of people. Lovehoney did say that customer care agents can advise customers on the best toy to use to suit an individual’s disability. They find this easier to do with the vast amount of products available.

Personally, I can’t imagine many people would feel comfortable chatting about the specifics of their sex life with a customer care agent.   

2. Would you ever consider having visibly disabled models on the product image? 

Lovehoney stated “We are a very inclusive company and do have disabled customers modelling items on our Instagram page, however, currently do not have disabled models on our site. This I know has been discussed, to be inclusive as with colour, size, age, gender etc”.

It became very clear to me that disabled shoppers were an afterthought, and just so happened to give some good reviews of some of these products. The list of products can be found here: top sex toys for disabled users 

After receiving this somewhat disappointing response, I decided to put together my own list of suitable toys and aids. Click the green link below to download. I hope you enjoy! 

About the author:

Aimee Jones is an Occupational Therapy student based in Surrey. She loves dog walks and pasta. She’s currently in her second year of study at Brunel University.

If you’d like to get in touch, you can email her at 2375482@brunel.ac.uk