From lift attendant to astronaut. It only took eighty years.

In 1946, the British government decided which jobs were suitable for disabled people.

Lift attendant. Car park attendant. That was broadly it. Under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944, these roles were formally designated — reserved exclusively for registered disabled workers. It was actually an offence to give the job to someone without a disability without a special permit. By the 1960s, almost every lift attendant and car park attendant in Britain carried the green card that marked them out as registered disabled.

The scheme was well-intentioned. It was also, in hindsight, a monument to low expectations.

Fast forward to last month. The UK Space Agency and a commercial space company called Vast have announced that John McFall — British surgeon, Paralympic sprinter, bronze medallist at Beijing 2008, and amputee since the age of 19 — is on track to become the first physically disabled person to live in orbit.

His research brief includes investigating how prosthetics behave in microgravity.

Which means his leg is going to float. Serenely, silently, across the cabin. He will have to catch it. I find myself with a remarkable number of questions — is there a designated leg-storage locker? Does it velcro to the wall at night? What's the protocol if it drifts past the window during a live broadcast? — and I accept, somewhat reluctantly, that none of them appears to be troubling ESA.

Here's the thing that strikes me, though.

In zero gravity, almost every barrier that defines John McFall's working life on Earth simply ceases to exist. No inaccessible buildings. No equipment designed for someone else's body. No explaining his access needs to facilities management for the fourteenth time. No steps. No poorly-positioned desk.

Space, by accident, turns out to be the most accessible workplace ever created.

I've spent many years talking to employers about reasonable adjustments — the legal duty, in place since 1995, to adapt the working environment to the individual rather than the other way round. Thirty years on, it remains one of the most misunderstood obligations in employment law. Too complicated, employers say. Too uncertain. Too expensive.

ESA managed it. For space.

What's interesting is how they did it. When they opened their 2022 astronaut recruitment, they didn't ask, "can a disabled person meet our existing criteria?" They went back to first principles. A specific call went out for a parastronaut — someone with a lower limb disability — who would then go through the same rigorous four-stage selection as every other candidate. Medical exams. Psychological assessments. Practical tests. Group exercises. Same standard, redesigned process.

23,000 people applied for the wider astronaut programme. 257 applied for the parastronaut role. John McFall was the one selected.

Not as a gesture. As the best candidate for a job that needed doing.

So here's where we've got to.

In 1946, Parliament surveyed the employment landscape and decided that pressing buttons in a lift was about the measure of what a disabled person could contribute to working life.

In 2026, ESA looked at the same question and concluded that what they actually needed was someone to go into orbit and help rewrite the rules of human physiology.

Both decisions were shaped by what people were prepared to imagine.

One of the most demanding employers on the planet — one that puts people in a metal tube and fires them into space — figured out how to include a person with a physical disability. They did the risk assessment. They redesigned the question. They made it work.

I'm genuinely not sure what the average office building is waiting for.

John McFall launches in 2027. I'll be watching.

Wondering, quietly, where he's put his leg.