Thanks to the availability of appropriate technical solutions as well as growing experience with remote interpreting in various countries, video interpreting has made its way into community interpreting, predominantly in the healthcare sector. It is thought to combine advantages of face-to-face interpreting (e.g. visibility, eye contact, non-verbal communication, visual information and certain trust-building features) with advantages of distance interpreting (e.g. saving travel time and expenses) in facilitating correct diagnosis and obtaining informed consent, compliance, treatment success and patient safety. This article describes a video-interpreting initiative undertaken in the German-speaking DACH area (Germany, Austria, German-speaking part of Switzerland) following the 2015 refugee crisis. It highlights the training measures introduced to address the needs of patients speaking languages for which interpreters are not usually available in Germany and Austria, and the subsequent expansion of the initiative into Switzerland. It also reports on the views of the course participants on the basis of a questionnaire survey conducted after training
