AudioEye is one of many companies doing website and document remediation, but their approach seeks to help millions of sites at once with a focus on content management systems which are used by many website designers. Joe speaks with Todd Bankifeir, Chief Executive Officer of AudioEye to learn more in this podcast.
Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2018 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.
Transcript
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Almost live from beautiful San Diego, it’s blindbargains.com coverage of CSUN 2018, featuring team coverage from across the Exhibit Hall and beyond, brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.
On the American Foundation for the Blind web site, you’ll find everything you need to know about blindness and visual impairment. Search our national job bank, discover the history of Helen Keller, read our blog on current issues, find professional resources, and even more. Our site is completely accessible. Check it out at www.afb.org.
Now, here’s Joe Steincamp.
JOE STEINCAMP: Hey, everyone. Joe Steincamp, back over at the AudioEye booth.
You know, you guys were very popular last year, and we had a lot of people writing in and asking questions. So things have changed over the years, or, at least –
TB: Year.
JS: -- the year since I’ve been here. Look. A podcast this long, it’s like dog years. What can I tell you? So what’s been going on over at AudioEye? What are you seeing? Is it all 508 Refresh all the time, or what’s going on?
TB: You know, we obviously take, you know, full accounting for what’s going on in a regulatory environment. But really – Joe, you know, that’s a billion and a half websites out there that need –
JS: Sure.
TB: -- to be made accessible, so there’s plenty of work to get to.
JS: Right.
TB: So we’re spending a lot of time. The thing that we developed recently is we’ve been able to get to large CMS platform providers –
JS: Okay.
TB: -- that host thousands of sites in one location –
JS: Right.
TB: -- and do partnerships with them, because if the AudioEye’s able to enable the entire platform to be accessible –
JS: Right.
TB: -- so then it’s just module on and off switches for each of the individual templated sites. And we can make those sites accessible. And so therefore, we’ve been able to sort of, just, catapult through a number of sites over this last year. And that’s just a really exciting thing for us. There’s a billion and a half websites. You can’t do them one at a time. We’ll be here for 400 years.
JS: That’s true. That’s true. And we’re just talking about archive.org. I mean, come on. That’s –
TB: I know.
JS: Yeah. There you go.
TB: Exactly.
JS: So with that happening, what are you seeing in the field or the industry that’s changing the most? What do you think is the growth program for a lot of things in the services that you provide?
TB: Well, one of the areas is, you know, obviously, you can’t really state that your website’s fully accessible if the documents that reside on it are not accessible.
JS: True.
TB: -- so PDF remediation, for us, was really another important element that we needed to make a technology solution for, and we have done that.
JS: Okay.
TB: So we can literally take PDF documents of all types and we can take them, move them into HTML, do the remediations, and then pull them back into PDF and then put them back on your site in fully accessible format.
JS: And that’s a pretty fast conversion process?
TB: We’ve got it down to be really quick. It depends on the number of manual looks you got to do –
JS: Yeah.
TB: -- but the -- most of it is done with the automated process.
JS: So no clip-art?
TB: Yes. Occasional --
JS: Right. No. I get you. I get you well –
TB: Can’t completely eliminate that.
JS: No. No. It’s a visual society. What can I say?
TB: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: I get you. Weird HTML links, you know. That kind of stuff.
TB: Yeah.
JS: Cool. Okay. So that’s what’s going on. And that’s browser-independent. It’s not like, a, this works best for Chrome, or this works best for –
TB: No. No.
JS: -- Firefox.
TB: We’re browser-agnostic at AudioEye.
JS: Right.
TB: Yeah. We don’t let those things get in our way.
JS: Okay.
TB: We have the developer technology to address them all.
JS: Okay.
TB: Yeah.
JS: And that has to be -- Edge included, I would assume?
TB: Yes.
JS: Okay.
TB: Yes.
JS: And so all of that is working and doing that in a very speedy package. What else is going on over at AudioEye?
TB: Well, we love our voice-recognition capability.
JS: Okay.
TB: It’s really where -- we continue to perfect it. We’re using it in a number of applications with fast food restaurants, with ADP, human resource components.
JS: Yeah.
TB: And we see, you know, the advancement of voice recognition. So everybody knows Siri and Alexa, and everybody can get to sites and they can answer all the questions, but who can move through a browser environment, meaning – AudioEye’s now developed that capability. So if you want to do online job applications, you can do it with your voice. If you want to shop, you can do it with your voice. Just go to the AudioEye-enabled site, and it has a voice recognition capability now, to move and navigate through a website.
JS: Wow. So just a regular headset mic or other type of microphone, and you’re just going to interact with it?
TB: Just your normal laptop microphone –
JS: Yeah.
TB: -- you know, desktop microphone, it allows you to navigate. Yes.
JS: And simple command structure. And there’s –
TB: Yeah.
JS: -- is there the ability for someone to learn that navigation on the websites, or they could actually get a tutorial or something like that?
TB: It has a small tutorial, but it really gives you the basic commands.
JS: Uh-huh.
TB: And it gives you the – what to call it –
JS: Okay.
TB: -- you know, Computer, or whatever. And you can name it if –
JS: Well, good. All right.
TB: Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
TB: You can insert your own name and then use that from going forward so –
JS: Okay. Cool. Okay. So if people want to know more about your services and learn more about what’s available –
TB: Audioeye.com.
JS: Oh. There it is.
TB: It’s the place to go.
JS: All right. Well, thank you for your time.
TB: Thanks --
JS: I appreciate it.
TB: -- Joe.
JS: Thanks for listening to Blind Bargains coverage of CSUN 2018, here in sunny San Diego. There is so much more to come. And don’t forget to listen to the wrap-up show where we go over some of the materials that we have seen on the floor and talk about what impressed us.
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Joe Steinkamp is no stranger to the world of technology, having been a user of video magnification and blindness related electronic devices since 1979. Joe has worked in radio, retail management and Vocational Rehabilitation for blind and low vision individuals in Texas. He has been writing about the A.T. Industry for 15 years and podcasting about it for almost a decade.
