Conclusion: Moving forward

This final chapter of the Handbook of Disability: Critical Thought and Social Change captures the central ideas contained within this volume of work. We highlight the challenges and barriers that impede the progressive realization of human rights and disability justice and outline how this book envisions a sort of "normative paradigm, " not in a positivist sense, but whereby disability is the norm. This paradigm is inherently critical of present social arrangements and translates reasoning into practical measures. The presence of disability is no longer an exception or rarity but a commonly accepted characteristic of the population. We describe how all the authors of this handbook embed their work in the social, human rights, and/or disability justice models of disability while noting that there is a need for ongoing paradigmatic development. We conclude with an invitation for utopian thinking, practice, and activism based on a collective vision for the future. A way in which to further the dialectical argument and paradigm shifts that reflect our current and future situations, conditions, environments, and forms of living.