Today’s guest, Gavin Neate, joined Guide Dogs for the blind, where he served as a mobility instructor for 18 years. Previously, he had spent 10 years as a military policeman.

During his time working as a mobility instructor, where he worked on people’s independent mobility, he became very involved in the entire process of helping clients find ways to interact with society. He recognised the many day to day challenges facing people and he wanted to help find solutions to those issues.

We discuss how much of the problem solving should be left to the problem holders. Gavin talks about how history is full of people who have invented solutions that didn’t necessarily answer problems, therefore, when it comes to inventing solutions to help people with their mobility problems, it is crucial that they are involved.

His has great advice to young innovators who want to help people: dedication, commitment, belief and the ability to keep going even if you have to give everything up because you truly believe in what you’re doing.

Gavin’s innovation is the WelcoMe app. The font of the last two letters of the word are changed so that when reading it, people see it as, welcome me. The reason behind this is that when it comes to customer service, and interacting with other humans, disabled people often feel they aren’t welcome.

He talks about how as a mobility instructor he would run ahead of whichever venue his client was visiting and talk to the people in that venue – telling them how to welcome that client. He would give them 5 bits of information that meant when the client walked through the door, they felt welcomed into the venue, and that the venue understood their needs

The WelcoMe app means people can communicate with staff members before walking through the door of a venue.

We talked about our focus for this week being Disabled Access Day and asked Gavin why he thought we needed the day? Part of his answer was it should be every day, not just one day and he sees the day as one where you should be looking at what you’ve done in the past year and what you are planning to do this coming year.

You can contact us at the following:

Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/

Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

You can contact Gavin at Website https://www.wel-co.me/

Links https://linktr.ee/welcome.cs

Gavin Neate https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavin-neate?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app