The way Twitch is currently set up, most people with moderate to severe disability(s) are entirely unable to join the community of streamers on equal ground. Forget Partner; just getting to Affiliate is a wall that not all of us have the equipment to climb over.

On top of that, streamers have to choose either putting tags related to their games OR to their identity and community markers; am I putting "autistic" or "CC" or "hard of hearing" or "disabled or "nonbinary" or - or- or - OR.

There's no consideration for this, for the many of us who are passionate and have so much to share, who want to be an active part of the streaming community on Twitch in a way that allows us to access the same possibilities.

I won't just complain: There are steps that can be taken toward positive change.

One: Have an Alternative Needs option for Partner and Affiliate that would be, instead of an application to start with, a form to submit that we can use to tell you what we can and cannot reasonably do because of our disability(s). Then send an Adapted application with those restrictions removed and possibly some other goals (within our power and not dependent on others, ie: views/follows) reasonably altered or extended to make it fair. An example would be: "A disabled streamer cannot stream multiple times a week or adhere to a predictable/regulated schedule, however their total time streaming is [time], and they have been streaming since [date], and therefore is a good option for the program."

Alternatively, require ID verification only and allow the Affiliate program to be significantly more open and accessible to people of all schedules and lifestyles, and then the above suggestion would only apply to Partner.

Two: We have been asking for changes to the tag system for years now. Those changes are long overdue, the pizza is cold and moldy, and it's a problem.

Unlimited tags is an easy way to effortlessly solve this, but I have an even more community-driven suggestion. Do you all remember when YouTube used to actually have side-bar profiles? Twitch could really use something like that, a place for more than a brief sentence to introduce ourselves on a crowded screen.

An actual profile page to get to know the streamer, favorite games, how long they've been part of Twitch, and what communities they're a part of would be an incredible boon for us all. And that last part about the communities? That would be where the tags relevant for WHO we are as streamers would go. Separating them from the stream information means viewers could search for a type of stream AND a streamer from a community they want to participate in.

At the end of the day, we've been asking for these exact things, Twitch, for literal years. Look in this category and see just how many repeats there are with hundreds of votes, some from 2019. We feel ignored, invalidated, undervalued, unwanted, and incapable of even hoping for what is, for everyone else, an equal opportunity. Show us, through change and not words, that you're listening.