Thank You: AppRenaissance and others help fund sign language interpreters at PTW

And now for a bit of a public service announcement.

As Philly Tech Week matures, Technically Philly is often faced with issues that we never even fathomed when creating the event. This year’s Philly Tech Week doubled the total amount of attendees from last year, and with a bigger tent comes a more diverse community. For the first time, Philly Tech Week fielded requests for sign language interpretation across several events, over 34 hours total across the week.

These requests were unexpected and with the help of the community we ended up being able to provide assistance at every event requested, a feat only made possible by some generous community members that we’d like to thank.

• Philadelphia Game Lab – With only a few days notice, the folks at PGL pitched in to cover partial costs of an interpreter at its day-long “Gamification for Non-Profits” conference.
• PlanPhilly and PennPraxis – The design and development news site covered the cost of interpretation at their Lunchtime Series event.
• AppRenaissance – The Old City development firm graciously supported 14 hours of total interpretation across the week.
• Thanks to interpreter Brandi Chittum for helping us coordinate.

In tech, we commonly use the word “accessibility” when discussing issues of the digital divide. However, true accessibility means everyone has access to the resources and people in this wonderful technology community. Thanks to all the event organizers that worked with PTW organizers to fulfill often last-munite interpretation requests.

A special thanks to Bob Moul for graciously volunteering AppRenaissance’s resources to ensure that everyone could enjoy the second annual Philly Tech Week. If you’d like to sponsor ASL-certified interpreters for the 2013 Philly Tech Week, please let us know.