Disability activists, in engaging in identity politics, have adopted the strategies used by other social movements commanding human and civil rights, against such phenomena as sexism and racism. And these strategies have brought gains, but within certain limitations. The legislation also embraces the conceptual shift from disability being seen as an individualised 'medical problem' to rather being about community membership and participation, and access to regular societal activities such as employment, education, recreation and so on. Where access is inappropriate, inadequate, difficult or ignored, advocacy processes have been initiated to address situations and promote the people's rights. Yet, rights-based discourse, although employed as a political strategy, has also become a way of constructing disability by locking people with disability into an identity which is based upon membership of a minority group.
Entitlements thus become contingent upon being able to define oneself as a person with disability.
And the conceptual barrier between 'normal' and 'abnormal' goes unchallenged, so that while one may have entitlements legislatively guaranteed, 'community' which cannot be legislated for, remains elusive. While rights-based discourse, at a strategic level, has brought some additional entitlements to people with disability, it has not significantly altered the way in which disability is constructed and so, despite legislative changes, some people's lives have not necessarily changed. We are now seeing the emergence of a genetic model of disability, a revamped medical model, which 'promises' to actually expand the population of people with disability to include people whose impairment is their 'bad' genes and their disability is the social response of avoidance, discrimination and even elimination which their impaired genes elicit in others. Rights-based discourse fails to meet these challenges for, rather than seeking to dismantle the entire concept of disability, it actually relies upon such a construction to support its claims for rights and entitlements. Some writers argue that we need to go beyond conceptions of constructed disability to a notion of universalism whereby, according to Canadian writer, Bickenbach, disability is actually a fluid and continuous condition which has no boundaries but which is, in fact, the essence of the human condition.