Cesar is standing in front of Westmont hub poster. He has short dark hair and is wearing a grey suit with a blue shirt.
Cesar is standing in front of Westmont hub poster. He has short dark hair and is wearing a grey suit with a blue shirt.

UWL Westmont Hub virtual reality accessibility start-up CeeSound wins Judge's Award at Santander Awards

Sound engineer Cesar Portillo has created a virtual reality streaming platform to allow visually impaired people to fully enjoy virtual reality and films. He has been developing it with support from University of West London (UWL) business incubator Westmont Hub for the last three years.

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The concept started out as a research project Cesar conducted with the Royal National Institute for the Blind where he successfully tested experimental ideas around sound and audio description with visually impaired people. 

I was inspired by my best friend who has been blind from birth,” he explains. “We met playing video games. Every time we play, he beats me, and I have realised that sound is the way that he ‘sees’.” 

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Group of diverse people sat around a large white table discussing business scale up ideas.

After completing postgraduate studies at UWL, Cesar wanted to see how he could further develop sound technology to improve visually impaired people’s experience of visual entertainment. CeeSound also has potential uses such as in education, tourism and training. 

Audio description has limited options, you can’t personalise it and it only provides a small part of the experience,” Cesar says. “We are using sound engineering and virtual reality to create an application that allows visually impaired people to select the description that best fits their needs.” 

Find out more about CeeSound

The potential audience for CeeSound is huge as there are 285 million people globally with visual impairment.

There are also 30 million active visually impaired video game players,” Cesar explains. “We want to start with working on animation projects to give children in particular good access to entertaining content.”  

CeeSound was nominated for the Santander X UK Awards in the launch category and Cesar took part in the semi-finals on 28 November.   

While we were not chosen for the finals, we were one of six entries to be given a 'Judge's Choice’ award which includes a £2,000 grant,” Cesar says. “This inspires us to keep developing our CeeSound product. We have learned so much during the last two months - from how to present, publish and build our business to developing our own entrepreneurial identity." 

Westmont Enterprise Hub

The Westmont Enterprise Hub offers support and resources for thinkers, innovators and entrepreneurs to connect and grow their ideas, from concept to reality.

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Cesar hopes to apply for the Santander X UK awards in future in the accelerate category to show the value of his business as it grows. 

Stephen Fry, Executive Director, Westmont Enterprise Hub, said;

Here at the hub we back brilliant ideas and help pre-startups grow! CeeSound is a perfect of example of this and well deserving of the boost that this ‘Judge’s Choice’ award gives. Well done, Cesar!’ 

Find out how Westmont Hub can support you in developing your startup idea

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