Reimagining Classroom Accessibility: How Avery Neale Built FrontRow To Empower Visually Impaired Students
Written by Monica Garza | November 2025
Meet Avery Neale, a junior at The University of Texas at Austin double majoring in Finance and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her journey into entrepreneurship is rooted in something deeply personal: the experience of navigating school with a visual impairment and wanting better for students who come after her. As the founder of FrontRow, Avery is working to reimagine accessibility technology and create more inclusive learning environments for all students.
“FrontRow is a note taking platform where students who have disabilities or may have a hard time focusing or seeing in class can log on and have a display of what the professor is writing,” she explains. With FrontRow, she hopes no student has to choose between getting the help they need and feeling like they stand out in the classroom.
Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Avery’s entrepreneurial spirit has always been tied to purpose. “I have always been really passionate about social impact and storytelling. I think those two tie together pretty well in everything I have done,” she said. In high school, that passion led her to create an education platform in partnership with a local African American museum. She developed lessons on stereotyping and allyship and spent years in theater from elementary through high school, learning how powerful stories can shape perspectives. “You cannot get to social impact until you convince people how important something is, through shaping your experiences to tell a beautiful story,” she said.
Even before she had a startup, Avery carried the instincts of an entrepreneur. She laughs as she remembers her earliest ventures: “As a little kid, in kindergarten I would sell jewelry and in elementary school I would sell candy and Pokémon cards. I would always have a lemonade stand going on,” she shared. That early instinct to create, sell, and connect with people followed her into college.
At UT Austin, Avery found a way to merge her creative background with her technical and business ambitions. “Even with my majors, one is very technical and one is very business, but through both of them I try to use storytelling and social impact to connect the two,” she explains. The intersection of business, engineering, storytelling, and impact would eventually become the foundation for FrontRow.
The idea for FrontRow emerged when Avery’s long standing challenges with accessibility in the classroom resurfaced in a new way. Growing up, she used assistive devices such as Freedom Scientific to help her see, but the tools often came at a cost. “I remember the first time, in first or second grade, my coordinator was showing me this piece of assistive technology and it was really bulky,” she recalled. “Even though it would have helped me, I knew that if I had it, I would stand out. Assistive technology was always pretty bulky and not very innovative.”
When she entered UT’s engineering program, those feelings intensified. Keeping up with lecture material became even more difficult and the tools available did not match the environment she was in. “Is this going to be my experience for the rest of college?” she remembers thinking. “And I was like, no, I need to take this feeling and do something about it.” Struggling to see content in class began to affect her ability to fully participate. That realization turned into a turning point. “If I am feeling this way, other people are feeling this way. And if other people are feeling this way, then that is not okay,” Avery reflected. That conviction pushed her to turn her pain points into action.
Her next step was joining the Social Entrepreneurship Learning Lab (SELL) program during her sophomore year. “Once I joined SELL, that opened up so many doors and brought in so many ideas,” she said. “SELL taught me that entrepreneurship is empathy. You have to actually care about the people you are helping.” For Avery, that message clicked immediately. She was not just solving a technical problem. She was designing for students whose experiences she understood intimately.
Founded in 2023, FrontRow is a note taking and assistive technology platform built with three core features: personalized playback, automated zoom, and an AI chatbot. “We automatically zoom in to the content that the professor is referencing, so that students do not have to pull out their phone to zoom in or adjust the region they want to zoom into,” Avery explains. The goal is to give students a way to access lecture content seamlessly, without calling attention to themselves or falling behind. FrontRow, at its core, is an impact driven startup. “I think I am my happiest when I am helping other people, and I think that FrontRow does that,” she said. “I want to make sure that students do not have to feel bad about their disability, that they can feel empowered by it.”
As FrontRow began to take shape, Avery’s momentum grew. She received LaunchPad Startup Grants for three consecutive semesters and earned a spot in the Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute’s FoundHER Program. She later participated in the Forty Acres Founders Program, a pre-accelerator hosted by the Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center (HKEC) that supports UT Austin student founders. Reflecting on the Forty Acres Founders experience, Avery credits both the mentorship and the peer community for her progress. “Every founder who they brought in was just really driven and had such a personality,” she shared. “It was really cool to be able to see other founders who had success stories and ideas that I would never think of. It just makes me think that ideation is really important.”
In Spring 2025, Avery won First Place and the Audience Choice Award at the Forty Acres Founders Program Pitch Competition. “Winning was obviously so exciting. That was just so exciting,” she said, smiling. “And then getting Audience Choice Award too was just, that was such an awesome moment. I think I blacked out a little bit.”
Her work with FrontRow has opened doors far beyond Austin. In the summer of 2025, Avery studied abroad at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, where she piloted FrontRow in one of her classes. The experience gave her a broader view of how accessibility looks in different countries and how FrontRow might adapt to international classrooms. Through pitch competitions in places like San Diego and Georgia, she has expanded her network and met disability service coordinators, investors, and faculty members from universities across the country.
Programs like the Harkey Institute Summer Fellowship and events at Capital Factory have also played a role in her journey. “I got funding through the Harkey Institute and then I used the Harkey Institute’s mentoring program. I have also used the HKEC’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence program as well,” she said. Throughout it all, Avery credits her family as her strongest support system. “It is so important to me that they see that I am putting in as much effort as I can to make their sacrifices worth it,” she shared.
On the product side, FrontRow continues to evolve through intentional, user centered development. Avery works closely with a design intern and spends significant time interviewing disability advisors across universities. “I probably interview like 20 to 50 schools each week. Me and my university outreach team member probably interviewed six to eight schools this week, which is so many,” she said. “We are constantly building those relationships, which is so important.” Each conversation helps refine FrontRow and introduces the platform to new campuses.
Looking ahead, Avery has clear goals. She aims to finalize the product by February 2026 and sell to two universities by May 2026. Long term, she hopes to scale FrontRow to reach as many students as possible. “I want to create an experience where the first time students are introduced to something that can solve a problem they face in a school setting, FrontRow opens the door,” she said. “It excites them and shows them that the world is built for you, not against you. That is my goal.”
For Avery, entrepreneurship is as much a mindset as it is a role. “I think an entrepreneur is someone who is solving a problem in an innovative way, a trailblazer. I think that is what an entrepreneur is,” she said. When she thinks about the founders who inspire her, a common thread stands out. “Every entrepreneur I think of and that inspires me is someone who lives and breathes their problem. And I think that is so important. The best entrepreneurs are so driven, and scary driven. They scare me a little bit, but in a good way.”
When asked what advice she would give to students who are interested in entrepreneurship, Avery returns to the power of taking action. She emphasizes not waiting for the perfect time or the perfect idea. “Just do it. That is what I wish I would tell myself. And that is what I would tell any student who is interested in entrepreneurship,” she said.
She thinks back to her first year at UT Austin, before FrontRow existed, when she considered applying to SELL but hesitated. “I think about my experience my freshman year when I was going to apply to SELL, or I wanted to apply and I did not,” she shared. Now, she encourages students not to let fear or doubt hold them back from stepping into the entrepreneurship community. “I just wish I would have taken that leap earlier,” she said. “You do not need to have the perfect idea or the perfect problem. You just need to surround yourself with people who look like the person you want to be.”
To learn more about FrontRow, visit: https://frontrow-notes.com/
This article is from the FOUNDER STORIES series, a feature article series published by the Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center (HKEC) that highlights UT Austin student founder success stories and how the HKEC has played a role in their entrepreneurship journey. The HKEC offers a variety of dynamic resources to UT Austin students, including competitive funding opportunities, networking events, informative article series, mentorship and more.
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