By Paul Richoux

“Inclusion is at the core of what I do, right from the outset” says Gavin Neate as I catch up with him several months after our initial meeting.

It’s been six months since I last spoke to Gavin and he was buzzing even then, as he was about to leave his job and launch himself full-time into an endeavour that he had been dreaming of for some time. His goal: using brilliant new technology to help people and bridge the gap between disabled and non-disabled people. At the time, the plan was to carry forward his idea, the Pedestrian Neatebox, and whilst this is still very much happening, his concept and vision have carried him in new directions that have boosted the impact of his work even further.

The transition to full-time enterprise

For a few years Gavin had been working on this project whenever he had a spare moment, but realising he could only do so much this way, he took a sabbatical for a year from his job (training visually impaired people to use guide dogs) in September 2013 and made Neatebox his number one priority. Whilst referring to a metaphorical graph that shows productivity he said, “following two or three years of steady but slow progress, in October of that year, the graph shot up!”

So what’s been going on? Well, one of the first things he did was apply to join Espark, a “business accelerator” whose goal it is to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses, and that has close links to RBS.

Elsewhere, he was talking to people from Guide Dogs who were keen to get Gavin involved with the ‘Family Day out’ programme, an initiative intended to facilitate family outings for people who are either blind or visually impaired. Here Gavin was able to make use of his years of experience working with blind and visually impaired people, having seen the difficulties they face when out and about, to influence the programme.

It was here that he realised that the proximity aware technology he uses for the Pedestrian Neatebox could be used to receive as well as send information. This opened up a whole new range of possibilities, and could enable people with a disability in a fashion that needn’t exclude them from others.

“Inclusion without exclusion” – that is one of Gavin’s favourite adages, and he explains it as follows:

“Now for the first time in history we are in a place where people with a disability can use the same technology, and be enabled using the same tools as non-disabled people. We’ve gone from it being us and them to it simply being us - with inclusion from the outset”.

Inclusion without exclusion

He is evangelical as he maps out the enormous potential that technology now has as a leveller of society. Think about it, so many people use their smartphone to access all manner of information all the time. All it takes is for the software to be adapted or personalised in some way and we can make life so much easier for people with disabilities without excluding them or others.

Working with the National Museum of Flight (part of National Museums Scotland), Gavin is putting theory into practice by helping set up hotspots around the museum with relevant information at each spot. Different locations around the museum have relevant information, and, at present, if a visitor is blind or visually impaired, they may be handed an audio guide or a braille card. Whilst this may be helpful it also immediately sets them apart from the people who do not need such aids, and also excludes the person who doesn’t have that information. Gavin’s invention, which has been given the name Attraction Neatebox, makes it so that instead of having to use tools for disabled people (“Them”) they simply use a standard tool we all use in common (“us”). Suddenly inclusion isn’t an afterthought, it’s a core part of the development process from the word go.

And the key part of the equation for this to work is Neatebox smart beacons (or Neate-Beacons). Here’s a textbook description of what they do

Neate-Beacons are positioned at specific points around your venue. Without the need for third party communication such as wifi or GPS, they connect directly to those within a defined proximity and send out location-relevant information to the pre-downloaded app on your visitor’s mobile device.

So if there’s a video to watch, the visually impaired visitor can quickly receive it onto their smartphone and listen to it with audio description. If they are deaf or hard of hearing, they can receive it with subtitles. Texts can be sent to the smartphone as audio files, and this is just the beginning. What information couldn’t be made available in this fashion?

Where to now?

Both the Pedestrian Neatebox and the Attractions Neatebox are constantly being developed to reach their full potential. The pedestrian Neatebox has received massive support and approval from the wider technological community and is currently awaiting a demo for the Edinburgh Council (Gavin recently won top prize at the Edinburgh Apps event for the Pedestrian Neatebox). Microsoft and Apple are just a few of the companies that have shown an interest in Gavin’s work, and to put it in his own words, “I used to have to pitch my ideas. Now I’ve stopped chasing people and the people are coming to me. That is such a good feeling!”

If you are interested, would like to get involved with Neatebox, or simply want to know more about it, Gavin is very keen to hear from you. You can give him a call on 07429155934 or email him at neatebox@icloud.com. Visit the Neatbox website by clicking here.

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