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We hoped then that the book would challenge some taboos about disabled sexuality and lead to change. Well, a decade later not much seems to have happened. For example, Simon Parritt and Disability Now ran an excellent survey of disabled people's views in 2005, to which more than 1000 people responded.

Sadly, many of the stories seemed to echo what people had told us in the 1990s. Few service providers or charities appear to be addressing the issues around disabled sexuality. Yet for most adults, intimacy and sex are high on their list of goals, and too many disabled people are still excluded - by lack of confidence, by barriers, by poverty, and by prejudice.

Because of our book, I regularly get invited to speak about these issues. This month, I attended an excellent event organised by , where I met the redoubtable Tuppy Owens, who has campaigned consistently to promote disabled people's access to sex for many years: her is still one of the few places to get information or to meet people.

Last week, I took part in an event at New York University, the first of a year-long series of lectures about disabled sexuality organised by the Centre for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.

One of my fellow speakers in Manhattan was Jan Garrett, director of Berkeley Centre for Independent Living, who spoke about devotees, who are people, usually male, who have an attraction to amputee women. Jan, who herself has no limbs, wanted to challenge the prejudice surrounding this aspect of sexuality.

Now, I have to put up my hand, and admit that I was previously sceptical about the devotee phenomenon. Even the rare discussions of disabled sexuality tend to be silent about devotees - our book, the Disability Now survey, and even the Outsiders club website hardly mention it. Yet on the internet, there are thousands of websites concerned with sexual attraction to amputees, to people who use callipers or who have other impairments.

The sexual attraction is often quite specific: Jan listed an alphabet of acronyms used by the devotee community, starting with AK (above the knee), BK etc. Devotees are well organised. For example, there is a regular national convention in America called Fascination, where devotee men pay the attendance costs of amputee women. It was there that Jan met her own husband.

Of course, sometimes this attraction gets pathological, even abusive. For example, men post photographs of women which they have taken covertly. Sometimes devotees turn up in hospitals, sitting by the bedside of women who have had accidents and amputations. There have also been stories of people getting jobs in the medical or caring professions where they can legitimately spend time with disabled people. Some become stalkers.

But Jan argued that most devotees are not exploitative, and that devotees themselves are eager to prevent these forms of negative behaviour. She argued that Acrotomophilia (the official term for this sexuality) is no different from other attractions. For example, some people are attracted to redheads, or to circumcised men, or to Oriental people, or to women with big breasts.

As one website suggests: "To the devotee the amputation is a sexually attractive physical characteristic no different from any other physical characteristic." Devotees admire amputee women, sometimes even seeing them as saintly. Positive experiences around disabled people in early life may contribute to this impairment attraction.

Jan concluded by saying that perhaps the negativity surrounding the devotee phenomenon was because we can't imagine anyone finding impairment "sexy".

Although I have strong opinions on most matters, I can't make up my mind on this one (I very nearly typed, "I'm totally stumped" but that would be tacky). I worry that those men specifically attracted to disabled women, are men looking for someone to be dependent or grateful or passive.

In the past, I've met people who obviously had a "thing" about dwarfs. I think if I had a relationship with someone whom I knew was predominantly attracted by my size, I'd be worried about being objectified. After all, it might not be me as an individual he or she would be wanting, but me as a type. I also find it disturbing when contact ads - particularly gay contact ads - specify minutely the physique or race of the preferred sexual partner.

It seems very superficial: I'd like to think I've always been attracted to individuals, looking for personality rather than a particular physique. Having said that, I cannot deny that certain physical features are more likely to attract my attention. And perhaps I am guilty of being condescending about things I do not understand.

The easy academic conclusion is always "we need more research". In the case of disabled sexuality, I think we need to hear more personal stories and understand the issue more, but we also need to challenge our assumptions - both disabled and non-disabled people have prejudice about disability and sexuality. It might be wonderful to find that there are people out there who are specifically attracted to people like you, and why shouldn't there be?

In general, we should be fighting for service providers - including Centres for Independent Living - to do more to address disabled people's sexual needs and rights.

In Denmark, Torben Hansen, who has cerebral palsy, is for refusing to pay the costs of a sex worker coming to visit him in his home. If it wasn't for access barriers, he argues, he'd be able to visit her at her workplace. In other words, he is facing disability discrimination, and he has a right to reasonable accommodation. Disabled Danes already have the right to funded monthly visits to prostitutes. Over 20% of male respondents to the DN survey had visited a sex worker. But nearly two thirds of males and a fifth of women said that if there was a trained, funded sex service available, they'd use it. Britain, as a culture, is obsessed with the idea of sex, but still strangely prudish about the practicalities. Many disabled people are impatient for that to change.