The Real Deal on ASL Tech and Apps

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Every few months articles and imagery featuring a young engineer, confidently smiling while wearing a futuristic contraption on their hands makes the rounds.A conversation not taking place enough around these technologies and articles is – who exactly are these tools helping? In this article we’ll layout The Real Deal on ASL Tech and Apps, explaining how some of these tools cause harm and provide you with better perspectives and tech to foster more helpful communication and connection with Deaf individuals.

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Ongoing Training For Interpreters: What’s Important and What’s Not 

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Ongoing Training is the most critical component of being a successful interpreter. Unlike some jobs where you can maintain a base level of skills, interpreting requires you to keep up with changes in language, culture, ethics and general linguistic studies. Trainings can be hard to come by or to schedule on top of a busy interpreter schedule. Finding the right trainings is also key as it’s critical to tailor your trainings to your goals. In this piece we’ll guide Spoken and Signed Language interpreters through what’s important and what’s not for ongoing training.

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Why ASL Interpreters Are Hard to Find?

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Ensuring Deaf and Hard of Hearing and Deafblind individuals have access to qualified and effective American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters is a language access right in America. Whether supporting coworkers, students, patients, or peers we want to make sure they have ready access to a great ASL interpreter. With continued pandemic and emergency response coverage came new strains on an already very limited pool of qualified interpreters. In this piece we’ll explore why ASL interpreters are hard to find.

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How to Become an ASL Interpreter

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The nation has experienced considerably more American Sign Language interpretation on their screens and phones due to the many COVID press events and national crisis coverage over the last 2 years. Films and Netflix shows also highlighting Signed Languages has further brought attention to these unique languages.But did you know that there is a dire need for new, diverse Sign Language interpreters and plenty of room to grow in this exciting field. So how does someone go about becoming a Sign Language interpreter? Our Deaf & Hard of Hearing team will lay out how a hearing person can become an effective ASL interpreter!

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