Our History

Mark’s parents David and Julia Gibbons started a company called AlphaMed in 1978 originally to selling Pacessetter pacers and other Cardiological equipment however during their travels they saw an expensive American CCTV reader (VisulTec) and saw the opportunity to manufacture a similar product for the European market. The company changed it’s name and AlphaVision was born! Their first unit was the AlphaMinor pictured here.

 

AlphaVision manufactured and assembled all the CCTVs from their hometown in Southern England. David and Julia’s son Mark Gibbons joined the family business as a traveling salesman in early 1985.

 

Mark working with a client using Braille display

 

In the early 80’s other worldwide manufacturers began to approach Alphavision and asked them to being distribution of their products in Europe – they regularly sold to Eire, Norway, Belgium, France, Spain, Austria, Falklands, and Cyprus! Alphavision  introduced one of the first 8 dot Braille display into the UK, and sold the Adhoc Scanning device,  the first affordable scanning to speech system.

 

 

 AlphaVision became one of the leading suppliers of assistive technology in Europe and imported many of the US products for example GW Micro’s VocalEyes (now WindowEyes). In 1998 Mark and Lesley Ann began running the main operations of the company until they moved to the US in 2001.