AudioEye is a marketplace leader providing digital accessibility technology
solutions for our clients’ customers through our Ally Platform products.
Our solutions advance accessibility with patented technology that reduces barriers,
expands access for individuals with disabilities, and enhances the user experience
for a broader audience of users. When implemented, we believe that our solutions
offer businesses the opportunity to reach more customers, improve brand image,
build additional brand loyalty, and, most importantly, provide an accessible
and usable web experience to the expansive and ever-growing population of individuals
with disabilities throughout the world. In addition, our solutions help organizations
comply with internationally accepted Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
as well as U.S., Canadian, Australian, and United Kingdom accessibility laws.
We generate revenues through the sale of subscriptions of our software-as-a-service
(SaaS) technology platform, called the AudioEye Ally Platform, to website owners,
publishers, developers, and operators and through the delivery of managed services
combined with the implementation of our solutions. Our solutions have been adopted
by some of the largest and most influential companies in the world. Our customers
span disparate industries and target market verticals, which encompass (but
are not limited to) the following categories: human resources, finance, retail/ecommerce,
food services, automotive, transportation, media, and education. Government
agencies have also integrated our software in their digital platforms.
Millions of Internet users are impacted by disabilities that prevent them from
accessing and using information on an equivalent basis. If not coded properly,
a website may not offer full functionality for all users, in particular for
users of assistive technology (AT), such as a screen reader. As a result, they
may exclude potential users and customers. These sites also may not comply with
U.S. and foreign laws addressing equal access and digital inclusion.
Traditional solutions addressing web accessibility may be costly and difficult
to implement. Historically, the process for achieving compliance has been driven
by costly consulting services and has not fully utilized emerging technologies
to reduce the compliance cost burden. At the same time, web accessibility efforts
have generally focused on a limited number of disability use cases, leaving
many users’ accessibility needs for digital inclusion unaddressed. Businesses
may have been reluctant to invest further in web accessibility solutions due
to a perceived lack of commercial return on the significant investment required
in order to design and implement a thorough and usable compliance solution.
Conventional solutions have been developed to help users access websites, but
these systems often require software to be installed on the user’s computer.
Many of these solutions are tailored to single or a limited number of use cases
and do not encompass a more holistic approach for addressing a wider range of
use cases. In some cases, these systems can be costly, unwieldy and inconvenient.
Furthermore, the assistive software’s ability to understand, process,
and interpret complex and dynamic web applications that are prevalent across
the web today is dependent on the quality in which the code was designed and
developed, including the level to which the website adheres to best practices
and standards.
AudioEye uses proprietary technology and development tools to offer advanced
web accessibility solutions that offer significant savings in time and money
relative to traditional solutions. Our compliance solutions focus on rapid remediation
of common accessibility issues, followed by in-depth analysis identifying and
addressing a more comprehensive compliance program. Our technology was built
to not only provide users with a cloud-based assistive toolset that gets embedded
and made freely available to users within our client websites, but to also improve
the code in a way that optimizes the user experience for users of existing third-party
assistive technologies, such as screen readers.
Remediation
By deploying AudioEye Dynamic Remediation Technology to fix common and high-impact
issues, AudioEye is able to improve the usability of our client sites on the
first day that they implement our solution into their site. Over a period that
we believe averages approximately 100 days, with actual time dependent on the
complexity of the client’s web site and other client-specific factors,
our proprietary Digital Accessibility Platform (DAP) empowers AudioEye engineers
to run in-depth analyses to fully understand and manually fix issues. For organizations
that do not want a managed SaaS solution and prefer to conform with web accessibility
best practices on their own, our cloud-based Digital Accessibility Platform
provides them with a comprehensive single-source solution for tracking and maintaining
a compliance audit of their web environments. The Digital Accessibility Platform
combined with Ally Managed Services that include AT testing and support services,
provide transparency for our clients allowing product owners to better understand
accessibility and usability issues as they look to fix issues at the source.
AudioEye addresses a multitude of accessibility issues for its clients; these
site improvements help prevent usability issues and may enhance the user experience
for site visitors – in particular, those customers accessing websites
through the use of assistive technology such as those provided by Microsoft,
Apple, Google, and others.
Business-Driven Accessibility
In addition to our compliance solutions, AudioEye offers business-driven, cloud-based
tools that enable our clients to provide a more accessible, usable, and customizable
experience to their customers. Improving digital experiences for end users leveraging
their own assistive technology is just one focus for meeting the needs of our
targeted end-users. In addition to AT users, a much larger demographic of users
(many of whom do not self-identify as having a disability or impairment) may
benefit from the availability of free user-friendly tools that allow them to
customize and optimize their digital experience. In short, we seek to enhance
the user experience for all individuals who arrive at digital experience without
having full access to a high-quality user experience. Our mission is not only
one of inclusion but to also provide a superior user experience for anyone accessing
our proprietary assistive tools
Implementation
We offer solutions that enable our clients to enhance their brand by demonstrating
a robust approach to web accessibility. When adopting our technology, clients
implement the Ally Toolbar into their website. By embedding the AudioEye JavaScript,
our clients can offer the Ally Toolbar, our patented AT-in-the-Cloud solution
that provides our clients’ new and returning customers the opportunity
to thoroughly engage and interact with client websites in a more meaningful
and customizable way, regardless of their device type, language preference,
or preferred method of access. From the toolbar, site visitors are provided
with a Player utility that allows them to listen to the content of the website
read aloud, a Reader utility that allows them to customize the visual display
of the website, a Voice utility that allows them to command the browser using
their voice, and a Certification statement that helps our client promote their
commitment to accessibility and digital inclusion.
We offer a diversified portfolio of service offerings that are broken into two
broad business categories: subscription of our web accessibility technology platform
and managed services.
Our web accessibility technology platform (The AudioEye Ally Platform) consists
of the Digital Accessibility Platform and Ally Managed Service, which are offered
as an Internet Cloud SaaS subscription service. AudioEye offers two distinct
Web Accessibility solution offerings: Digital Accessibility Platform and Ally
Managed Service.
The AudioEye Digital Accessibility Platform empowers web developers to improve
their website using the most current, innovative, and industry-leading tools.
Primarily, the Digital Accessibility Platform is a self-service solution for
clients who want to own the accessibility process from beginning to end and
puts the power of accessibility issue tracking, auditing and remediation in
the hands of developers to improve the usability and accessibility of their
web infrastructure. Customers leveraging the Digital Accessibility Platform
have the option of embedding the AudioEye JavaScript into the front-end of their
website, allowing them to not only get the benefits of auto-fixes that improve
the usability and compliance level of their site, but it also allows them to
manage the remediation process in a controlled environment that serves as an
important resource for ongoing site auditing and issue tracking. At the same
time, for organizations that are developing for accessibility, this robust site
evaluation tool provides detailed information to help developers and designers
fully understand the identified issues as well as the different WCAG 2.0 best
practices that may be implemented in order to improve their website through
changes implemented at the source.
For organizations looking to offload the accessibility process, the Ally Managed
Service allows AudioEye Accessibility Engineers and AT Usability Testers to
do the vast majority of the heavy lifting in order to achieve accessibility
and compliance for our clients. This unique offering leverages a balance of
system and engineer generated remediation techniques to programmatically fix
website problems that inhibit full access to our clients electronic information
technologies. By providing our customers with full access to the Digital Accessibility
Platform and working with them on a long-term basis to provide automated and
manual testing in order to fully understand the issues of accessibility and
how to develop with web accessibility in mind, AudioEye is able to reduce the
burden on IT resources, leaving only limited work for finite client resources.
In conjunction with the implementation of the AudioEye JavaScript, AudioEye
makes available the option to publish the Ally Toolbar, which includes the Help
Desk and Certification Statement. The Help Desk provides support for end users
who have issues accessing content, while the Certification Statement outlines
our client’s commitment to providing an accessible and usable website
experience for individuals with disabilities. As part of the Ally Managed Service,
AudioEye makes available detailed reporting that provide the client with the
results of remediation efforts.
The AudioEye Ally Toolbar is included with Ally and provides easy-to-use, cloud-based
assistive tools that allow our clients to enhance the customer experience for
those looking to customize the way in which they engage with the web browser.
The Ally patented AT-in-the-Cloud solution provides our clients’ site
visitors with the opportunity to thoroughly engage and interact with our clients’
websites in a more engaging and fully customizable way, regardless of their
device type, language preference, or preferred method of access.
From the Ally Toolbar, users may engage the Player utility that mirrors the
features and functions of traditional screen reader software, allowing the user
to engage with the web environment by using their keyboard (instead of a mouse)
and listening to content instead of reading. Further, the built-in Reader utility
allows users to enlarge the viewport, increase font sizes, change color contrast,
highlight text as it is being read aloud, reduce clutter and distracting content,
simplify and normalize the user interface (including complex site menus) and
other features intended to optimize the user experience for addressing specific
use cases. As another utility, the Voice solution allows site visitors to command
the website user experience using basic and standardized verbal commands. The
Ally Toolbar also includes a Site Menu and Page Elements Menu utility for users
looking to navigate using their keyboard through a simplified user interface.
The free assistive tools made available within websites enabled with the AudioEye
solution have benefits for all site visitors, but, in particular, aging populations
and individuals who have vision, hearing, motor and intellectual disabilities,
including those who are color blind, dyslexic, learning to read, and looking
to maintain focus, or multi-task. Customers adopting this service also receive
quarterly reports detailing usage analytics.
As an additional revenue source, AudioEye provides Managed Services that support
the SaaS model infrastructure. When clients adopt the Digital Accessibility
Platform as a self-service tool, AudioEye markets and sells managed services
that include the following: Product Support, Accessibility Training from accessibility
engineers and subject matter experts, Manual Assistive Technology Usability
Testing, and other ad hoc services such as Video Transcription & Captioning,
PDF Accessibility Solutions, Audio Description Authoring, Accessibility Help
Desk, and more. These same services are also provided to those customers adopting
the Ally Managed Service solution and go beyond the inherent managed services
that coincide with the implementation of website remediation, the provision
of the Ally Toolbar, and, ultimately, the certification of our clients’
websites and web applications.