Problems with Trixie On a Pi

I attempted to install Trixie on a Raspberry Pi 4 (which, for non-Pi 
people, is in fact a 64-bit board) using the standard Pi Imager version 
1.96. Version 2 has some accessibility problems, so that was out. I 
selected my hardware and OS correctly, set up Wi-Fi, ssh and user 
account as normal, and wrote the generated image to an SD card. However, 
when I booted the system, I could not log in via ssh. Before we go down 
the road of suggesting I plug a keyboard and monitor in to solve the 
problem, you need to know that I'm visually impaired and have no local 
visual assistance or assistants. Instead, I went to Gemini to find out 
what else I could do to remedy the situation.


Its first recommendation was to plug in a keyboard and monitor to find 
out if the openssh server was installed and the service started. No can do.


Its next and most useful recommendation was to place a semaphore called 
ssh in the root of the boot partition, which theoretically should make 
the operating system install and start the openssh server. Instead, when 
I logged back in, I got a message that the account had not been properly 
set up, so there was nothing to log into. To me, this implies that the 
semaphore file actually did its thing and openssh was now running, but 
some new problem regarding the account I set up was corrupt in some way.


Suggestions on how to proceed most welcome.