These people should not be making a short range text solution, they should be building a low bandwidth internet extension with gateways to the real internet. Most of the information content of the internet can readily fit over 56kb lines once you strip out all the fluff. And in an emergency where you need or want a decentralized mesh network, that's more important that being able to text, who exactly?

Nevertheless IMO the mentioned demographics/use-cases want something turnkey ready, ~single button, and currently LORA based stuff is not like that, and is clumsier and needs a certain level of... tinkerer mindset, compared to a commercial license free radio system (which might have been set up with a minimal effort), where learning curve is basically volume knob and PTT button.

I have handed out simple FM radios for total tech-illiterate people (mothers, children, elderly physical workers) in an outdoor event with 0 cell coverage, and comms worked perfectly over the dozen square kilometer area. Biggest incident was a lost radio handset.

Also, DMR isn’t all about Ham Radio. It is used commercially.