Franz Pöchhacker is one of the most prominent scholars to address the importance of non-professional interpreting and community interpreting. Not only did he identify interpreting services for socially vulnerable and underserved groups of clients as an object of study, he also contributed to raising a general awareness of the significance of interpreting when it comes to granting access to services in institutional settings. He was one of the first to link the question of interpreting to the issue of linguistic social rights, and to advance professionalisation in this field, linking it to academic research. In this article, Pöchhacker’s contribution to the visibility of community interpreting in research and practice will be highlighted with a focus on Austria.