A landlord friend, worried for the safety of his tenants in the case of fire, decided to build a fire escape. The local authority rejected his plans on the grounds that they made no specific provision for handicapped people, but it admitted there was no requirement for a fire escape. So his houses remain fire-traps.

I was going to dig out a few archive columns about “accessibility” and computing to illustrate just how often this industry is reminded of the need to remember disabled people. It got depressing, and I realised that we have to re-formulate our aims in this market.

Accessibility, as we’ve dreamt about it, isn’t going to happen, and it’s time to admit it. If you’re blind, you will struggle to browse the web through the typical HTML page, a mouse is useless to you, and so is high-definition.

At Microsoft’s TechEd conference a few years ago, a blind computer user showed how hopeless it is to attempt to read a typical web page with a Braille display. Since then, the number of “accessible” pages has gone up, but the number of pages altogether has gone up many times faster.

I’m left with the depressing realisation that the best we can do is stop pretending that the world will cater for the disabled. Instead, the disabled should be entitled to free assistance. That may be more realistic.