Present Pal’s presentation will begin with an introduction from the software’s Founder and CEO Chris Hughes. Chris Hughes is a young Scottish Entrepreneur who has raised over £200,000 in funding and won various prestigious awards such as ‘The Herald’s Digital Student Entrepreneur of the Year’.

Chris will introduce spectators to the story of how Present Pal was created, referring to his own experience as a student with dyslexia at the University of Strathclyde. Chris will discuss his initial research into presentation anxiety and his discovery that people with specific learning differences struggle with public speeches due to visual stress, linear thinking tendencies and poor information recall. After a discussion of his research findings, Chris will share his motivations for creating the presentation support software Present Pal. Spectators will then be given an overview of Present Pal’s features including note creation, pop up bubbles, linear focus scrolling, overlay colours and Microsoft PowerPoint integration. Chris will then share Present Pal’s success in the UK Higher Education market as the software is now supporting students in over 80 UK universities including the University of Oxford. Other successes of Present Pal include being announced as Europe’s first ever Microsoft AI for Accessibility grantee. Chris will discuss the mission of the programme and our intentions to build AI-powered features into the software to support people with disabilities across the world. The presentation will end with our visions for future features and how we plan to support people who are hard of hearing and individuals with visual impairments. Questions will then be welcomed.

The audience will understand the difficulties facing people with learning differences, disabilities and mental health conditions when conducting a presentation. The audience will understand the features of Present Pal and how they are designed to support users when delivering a speech.