Planners and politicians in many countries build segregated housing facilities for people with disabilities and will proudly show these ghettoes to foreign visitors. City planners will construct one accessible housing complex or shopping street and use this as an alibi for leaving the rest of the city inaccessible. The international symbol of access shows me that only here am I welcome. In a micro world people with disabilities are made dependent on the limited choices that architects and planners consider sufficient for them. In a micro society disabled people will be reminded at literally every step of the limits that somebody else has imposed on them.
Micro solutions represent accessible islands in an otherwise inaccessible ocean.
Outside these islands people with disabilities appear helpless and are made to feel helpless. In Stockholm for example, over 95 per cent of the housing stock is inaccessible to people who cannot climb one or more steps. And Stockholm is probably one of the better cities. Look around and you will see how the physical environment segregates and excludes citizens with disabilities from active participation in all aspects of life. Apartheid is rampant - not only in South Africa but in most countries on this globe.