Every affirming badge on the internet was awarded by the business to itself. The Bloom Directory is being built to mean something different: audited, scored separately for affirming and accessible, and never blended.
The first problem is obvious once you notice it. A clinic adds itself to a directory, ticks a box saying it welcomes LGBTQ patients, and that is the entire verification process. Sometimes it is true. Sometimes it means one staff member attended a training in 2019. You find out which at the appointment.
The second problem is subtler and does more damage. Directories that do rate places tend to produce one friendly overall score — which means a practice that is genuinely warm to trans patients and has three steps at the front door reads as good. Disabled people learn quickly that a high rating tells them nothing, because the rating was never measuring them.
Affirming and accessible get separate scores here, permanently, and they are never averaged together. A place can be excellent at one and fail the other, and you deserve to see that before you drive there.
A trained volunteer works a listing through a standard rubric against evidence — intake forms, published policy, a phone call, physical access. Not an impression, and not the business’s own description of itself.
Become an auditor →Entry, bathrooms, exam equipment, communication access, and sensory environment — scored specifically, because “accessible” as a single checkbox has never once been useful information.
The architecture is designed and the build is underway. There is no directory to search yet, and we are not going to put up an empty search box implying otherwise. What we are doing now is recruiting auditors, so that on the day it opens there is verified data in it rather than a shell.
Audit listings — remote, self-paced, twenty minutes each, and lived experience counts as qualification. Or if you run a genuinely affirming or accessible practice, get in the queue to be listed and audited.
List your organization →47 people were helped before we asked for a dollar. Monthly giving is what lets us say yes before the money is in hand.