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Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a very common physical head injury that happens in an instant. These injuries can inaugurate a wide range of long-term impairments that vary widely between those that survive them. Using a blend of social scientific and contemporary Disability Studies theory, this paper traces how moderate-to-severe TBIs become disabilities through the daily lives and interactions of survivors, those closest to them, and their wider communities. The complex, shifting, and contextually dependent nature of what they term life 'with TBI' muddies and multiplies the acronym's original construction as a simple and knowable injury. The resulting confusion inaugurates a feedback loop between survivors' bodies and socialities that ultimately constitutes the injury as a complexly embodied disability. This process helps to productively expand the definition of disability to include other more complex and invisible conditions like TBI. This research studies a distinct kind of disability ("Traumatic Brain Injury") from a social perspective that has rarely been investigated. Disabilities like Traumatic Brain Injury affect and are changed by the social contexts, lives, and interactions of the disabled with those around them. Those that survive Traumatic Brain Injuries may not share any bodily or mental impairments, but they embody and perform the same disability. Traumatic Brain Injury is different across the individual, social, and political levels. This paper presents how those who may not fit within traditional definitions of disability can still be disabled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One central aim of disability studies is to shift understandings of disability, such that disability comes to be understood as about the social disadvantage/oppression that people face when society does not cater to impairment of body/mind. Nevertheless, there remains a need for more practical tools for disability advocacy, through which to transmit disability studies' ideas of disability to the general community. Drawing on a qualitative study of the perspectives of 23 people with physical and sensory impairments, this paper proposes virtual reality as an advocacy tool to communicate the principles and beliefs of disability studies. The findings highlight that, due to the nature of the technology, participants feel virtual reality has clear potential as a disability advocacy tool that can facilitate empathy, perspective-taking and positive social change, with a particular focus on how it is the environmental barriers and social attitudes around people that disables them. More practical advocacy or informal education tools are needed that align with the principles of disability studies. This research conducted in-depth interviews with 23 people with physical and sensory impairments. The research finds that virtual reality has clear potential as a disability advocacy tool. The participants reported that virtual reality can facilitate empathy, perspective-taking and positive social change. The research finds that virtual reality focuses on how environmental barriers and social attitudes around people with disability disable them, rather than focusing on impairment experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]