IN THE LAST COUPLE OF DAYS I’ve received Facebook invitations to: 1) Like the page of a new, upscale grocery store in Villeray; 2) Participate in a roundtable about journalism; 3) Attend a feminist literary event.

Each of these invitations appear everyday and even well-intentioned—they exist someplace between the inoffensive flyer distributed on the street and a special offer from Air Canada landing in your inbox. But they shocked me. Because they all invited me to places I, as a person in a wheelchair, can’t access.

The Facebook invitations didn’t frustrate me individually, of course, showing up as they did as a kind of blinking red light in the upper right corner of my screen. But as a whole, they exasperated me. What’s more important, they lifted the veil on what this able-bodied society tolerates.

I know. I know. Everyone is far more distracted than ...