Gerakan tersebut terdiri dari organisasi-organisasi aktivis difabel', yang juga dikenal sebagai advokat difabel, di seluruh dunia yang bekerjasama dengan tujuan dan niat serupa: seperti aksesibilitas dan keamanan dalam arsitektur, transportasi dan lingkungan fisik; kesempatan setara dalam kehidupan yang mandiri, kesetaraan pekerjaan, pendidikan dan tempat tinggal; dan kebebasan dari diskriminasi, pelecehan, penelantaran dan pelanggaran hak lainnya.[3] Para aktivis difabel bekerja untuk menerobos batas-batas institusional, fisik dan masyarakat yang menghalangi orang-orang difabel dari kehidupan mereka seperti masyarakat lainnya.[3][4]
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Pelka, Fred. The ABC Clio Companion to the Disability Rights Movement (ABC-Clio, 1997). ISBN978-0-87436-834-5
Pelka, Fred. What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement (Amherst, Boston MA: University of Massachusetts Press 2012). ISBN978-1-55849-919-5
Shapiro, Joseph P. No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (Times Books, 1993). ISBN978-0-8129-2412-1
Stroman, Duane. The Disability Rights Movement: From Deinstitutionalization to Self-Determination (University Press of America, 2003). ISBN978-0-7618-2480-0