Help make YouTube more accessible by joining this ‘Caption/Describe-A-Thon’

To celebrate her 31st birthday, accessibility consultant Alanna Raffel decided to throw a different kind of party: She’s looking to help more people enjoy YouTube videos by adding captions and descriptions.

Happening Friday at City CoHo— as a great prelude to our Signature Event, btw — the Caption/Describe-A-Thon organized by Raffel looks to band together accessibility-minded people who want to pitch in to add captions to YouTube and

Raffel, who admits she’s “not techy at all” has a background in healthcare and works as an occupational therapist in addition to her consulting practice. After watching a few YouTube videos she mastered the process enough to teach others in a quick instructional session before the event.

“From my perspective there hasn’t been a sufficient effort in making the world accessible to people with disabilities, Raffel said. “This feels like a space where I could make an impact.”

Last year, for her 30th birthday, she tackled a similar objective: Raffel organized a “mapathon” aimed at tracking accessible spaces around Philadelphia.

“Since then I’ve been on this journey of figuring out my place in the disability world,” she said.

For more on the local efforts around accessibility, read about what Philly organizations are doing to bridge tech’s accessibility gap.