Verbal descriptions of life have been around for centuries, but the digital age has made access to those descriptions even more important. Dr. Joel Snyder, an audio description pioneer, has created a book and website offering the first overview of the field, including its history, application to a range of genres, description of training techniques, and list of resources. Audio description brings the visual world to life, making theater productions, television shows, films, visual art and events accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. Describers employ succinct, vivid, imaginative words to convey visual images those with sight take for granted. Although countries worldwide have taken up the cause, the United States has fallen short on research and institutions to study the field. Dr. Snyder’s book helps fill in some of those gaps. “For decades, Joel Snyder has combined his astonishing command of language with his keen attention to detail to create word pictures that stir the mind’s eye, especially for patrons of the arts whose physical eyes cannot see. [...] His book has been long-awaited, and no doubt will become the standard for prospective audio describers around the world.” -Kelsey Marshall, Founding Director of Accessibility, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC Dr. Joel Snyder is known internationally as one of the world’s first “audio describers,” a pioneer in the field of audio description, making theater events, museum exhibitions, and media accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. Since 1981, he has introduced audio description techniques in 36 states and D.C. and in 35 countries. He holds a PhD in accessibility audio description from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Dr. Snyder’s company, Audio Description Associates, LLC (www.audiodescribe.com) uses audio description to enhance a wide range of arts projects including video and film, museum exhibitions, and live events. As Director of Described Media for the National Captioning Institute, he supervised the production of descriptions for Sesame Street and dozens of feature films and nationally broadcast television; his descriptions can be heard at Smithsonian Institution exhibits, the Getty Museum, the Albright-Knox Gallery, and throughout the country at National Park Service visitor centers. As Director of the American Council of the Blind’s Audio Description Project (www.acb.org/adp), Dr. Snyder voiced description for network coverage of President Obama’s inauguration in 2009 and 2013, and recently produced the first-ever audio-described tour of The White House. The ADP website is the nation’s principal provider of information and resources on audio description.

Translating Picturebooks examines the role of illustration in the translation process of picturebooks and how the word-image interplay inherent in the medium can have an impact both on translation practice and the reading process itself. The book draws on a wide range of picturebooks published and translated in a number of languages to demonstrate the myriad ways in which information and meaning is conveyed in the translation of multimodal material and in turn, the impact of these interactions on the readers’ experiences of these books. The volume also analyzes strategies translators employ in translating picturebooks, including issues surrounding culturally-specific references and visual and verbal gaps, and features a chapter with excerpts from translators’ diaries written during the process. Highlighting the complex dynamics at work in the translation process of picturebooks and their implications for research on translation studies and multimodal material, this book is an indispensable resource for students and researchers in translation studies, multimodality, and children’s literature.

The Verbal Behavior (VB) approach is a form of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), that is based on B.F. Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior and works particularly well with children with minimal or no speech abilities. In this book Dr. Mary Lynch Barbera draws on her own experiences as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and also as a parent of a child with autism to explain VB and how to use it. This step-by-step guide provides an abundance of information about how to help children develop better language and speaking skills, and also explains how to teach non-vocal children to use sign language. An entire chapter focuses on ways to reduce problem behavior, and there is also useful information on teaching toileting and other important self-help skills, that would benefit any child. This book will enable parents and professionals unfamiliar with the principles of ABA and VB to get started immediately using the Verbal Behavior approach to teach children with autism and related disorders.

Text and image are used together in an increasingly flexible fashion and many disciplines and areas of study are now attempting to understand how these combinations work.This introductory textbook explores and analyses the various approaches to multimodality and offers a broad, interdisciplinary survey of all aspects of the text-image relation. It leads students into detailed discussion concerning a number of approaches that are used. It also brings out their strengths and weaknesses using illustrative example analyses and raises explicit research questions to reinforce learning. Throughout the book, John Bateman looks at a wide range of perspectives: socio-semiotics, visual communication, psycholinguistic approaches to discourse, rhetorical approaches to advertising and visual persuasion, and cognitive metaphor theory. Applications of the styles of analyses presented are discussed for a variety of materials, including advertisements, picture books, comics and textbooks. Requiring no prior knowledge of the area, this is an accessible text for all students studying text and image or multimodality within English Language and Linguistics, Media and Communication Studies, Visual and Design Studies.