Error creating Apple Account for special needs son's iPad FaceTime

I am trying to do the following:

My special needs son (15) is moving to a special school. We have bought him an iPad. We would like to be able to FaceTime him from our Apple devices.

As far as I can tell, an AppleID is required for him to use FaceTime. So, I have tried to create an AppleID for him. From the web on a laptop, from the tablet itself, from my computer at work, from my phone using the Family option. I have updated the OS on every device. Nothing is working. I keep getting the error message, "Your account cannot be created at this time". None of the troubleshooting steps work and there is no way to contact Apple support.

This should be the easiest thing in the world. At literally every other website, creating an account is effortless. Type in the info they ask for, confirm your email address, boom, account created. Why Apple is making this difficult makes no sense to me. I would happily switch to some other platform but we have the iPad now and to buy a Fire tablet (or whatever) would be to set the purchase price of this iPad on fire.

Can anyone advise what I can try to get an account to create?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Can't create Apple account