The fourth edition of the foundational, widely adopted AAC textbook Augmentative and Alternative Communication is the definitive introduction to AAC processes, interventions, and technologies that help people best meet their daily communication needs. Future teachers, SLPs, OTs, PTs, and other professionals will prepare for their work in the field with critical new information on advancing literacy skills; conducting effective, culturally appropriate assessment and intervention; selecting AAC vocabulary tailored to individual needs; using new consumer technologies as affordable, nonstigmatizing communication devices; promoting social competence supporting language learning and development; providing effective support to beginning communicators; planning inclusive education services for students with complex communication needs; and improving the communication of people with specific developmental disabilities and acquired disabilities. An essential core text for tomorrow's professionals--and a key reference for in-service practitioners--this fourth edition prepares readers to support the communicative competence of children and adults with a wide range of complex needs.

Just as autism is a continuum of disorders, it is associated with a broad range of neurodevelopmental, social, and communication deficits. For individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) has a major impact on their daily lives, often reducing the occurrence of challenging behaviors. Aided Augmentative Communication for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders is a practical guide to the field, offering readers a solid grounding in ASD, related complex communication needs (CCN), and AAC, especially visual and computer-based technologies. Widely used interventions and tools in AAC are reviewed—not just how they work, but why they work—to aid practitioners in choosing those most suited to individual clients or students. Issues in evaluation for aided AAC and debates concerning its usability round out the coverage. Readers come away with a deeper understanding of the centrality of communication for clients with ASD and the many possibilities for intervention. Key areas of coverage include: AAC and assessment of people with ASD and CCN. Interdisciplinary issues and collaboration in assessment and treatment. AAC intervention mediated by natural communication partners. Functional communication training with AAC. The controversy surrounding facilitated communication. Sign language versus AAC. Aided Augmentative Communication for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders is an essential resource for clinicians/practitioners, researchers, and graduate students in such fields as child and school psychology, speech pathology, language education, developmental psychology, behavior therapy, and educational technology.

This definitive textbook incorporates critical information on implementing augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). It explains the principles and procedures of AAC assessment and offers intervention techniques that are appropriate throughout the life span of children and adults with congenital or acquired communication disorders.

This innovative and adventurous work, now in paperback, uses broadly feminist and postmodernist modes of analysis to explore what motivates damaging attitudes and practices towards disability. The book argues for the significance of the psycho-social imaginary and suggests a way forward in disability's queering of normative paradigms.

This book breaks new ground in ensuring access to the criminal justice system for one of the most vulnerable groups in the disability sphere: those individuals who have little or no functional speech. Their voices have been silent for too long. The book provides an international perspective on violence against children and adults with disabilities. It focusses on promising practices and approaches to reduce the risks and occurrence of violence, intervention, access to justice, increase awareness, knowledge and understanding of the violence, rape and sexual abuse against people with disabilities, with an emphasis on people who have little or no functional speech. Each chapter, written by an expert on disability and/or law and peer reviewed, contains extensive information, references, resources, manuals for practice, stories and reports of people with disabilities themselves confronting the violence they experienced. They also provide whatever data and statistics there are about the prevalence, the perpetrators, and access to justice. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has been ratified in over 135 countries to date. Three articles from the CRPD that apply directly to the topic of violence against people with disabilities and their access to the criminal justice system are focal throughout the book.