ABSTRACT
Technological development is often an incremental process, though still with major breakthroughs from time to time. In general, however, a leap in the dark is more likely to end with a dull thud than an exultant cry of ‘eureka’. Significant technical developments in transport have been made largely within the last 200 years – essentially since the discovery of the use of steam as a mobile motive power. Those developments have been paralleled by an increase in actual travel and in expectations of the ability to travel. The commonest result of disability is impairment in walking: the majority can still walk with varying degrees of difficulty, only a minority need a wheelchair. Demand-responsive transport – Dial-a-Ride – is a commonplace form of transport for disabled people in much of Europe and north America. Among Dial-a-Ride users it is common place to find complaints about difficulties of booking services and of lack of availability of buses.
