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The London Rail article makes some good points, but totally glosses over the fact that Caledonian Road was an outlier among early deep-level stations in having lifts reaching platform level. The vast majority of those stations required passengers to navigate a flight of steps between lift and platform. Not “accessible” by any standard.
And this was because generally the platforms were tightly squeezed directly under roads whilst lift shafts had to be in station buildings to one side.
As inconvenient as it is for disabled people, I think it’s fair to say that if today’s full accessibility standards had been in place in the 1900s these lines would never have been built at all, as the additional cost of providing full step free access would have made the whole concept of deep underground railways unviable – remember it was a crazy new idea at the time.