A Decade of Disruption with Sean Bradley

In this inaugural episode of HearSay, you'll hear from Sean Bradley, Co-Founder of AudioEye, about his journey into the startup world, some big roadblocks to success, and how he and the AudioEye team found success.

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HearSay is produced by Sojin Rank, Mike Barton, and Sean Bradley. Edited by Grant Lemons.

HearSay is a podcast focusing on the advocates, heroes, and leaders making the web more accessible. We’re interviewing these change makers to hear what they have to say, to set the record straight, and offer their perspectives on how we can all work to make the web accessible to all.

Chapters

• 0:31 Introduction
• 7:00 Beginning the Journey
• 12:41 Scaling the Business
• 29:13 Disruptive Technology
• 35:15 Testing with Users with Disabilities
• 40:07 Future of AudioEye

Transcript

0:00

How on earth does an individual with disabilities access that content? And how does a blind individual in particular, you know, use a computer and navigate the web and everything else? That's when this whole thing started. What's up? This is Ty with the HearSay podcast. Today, we're going to be hearing from Sean Bradley, not only a great friend of mine, but also the Co-Founder of AudioEye. You'll hear about his journey into the startup world and some of the challenges he faced and how he overcame them. Sean, welcome to the podcast, so excited to have you. So as some of you know, again, Sean’s a Co-Founder of AudioEye. I've had the pleasure of working with him for the last 12 years on our journey here. But today, we, you know, Sean, we just want to learn a little bit about the journey of AudioEye. We've heard a lot of crazy stories and a lot of pivoting to really get to where we are today. So, talk a little bit about yourself, where did you go to school, and where do you reside today? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so, reside in Tucson, Arizona. It's our headquarters. It continues to be our headquarters, has been since inception. This journey really started for me when I was actually in college. So, I was just a freshman at the University of Arizona, here in town. And– Bear Down! Bear Down! Yeah, Bear Down. At the time, my brother and I had a full time job and also going to school. We stepped away from our day jobs and went all in on our first adventure together, just in terms of wanting to be entrepreneurs and start something fresh and something of our own. Our first venture was surrounded– It was centered around online video and helping businesses bring streaming media content, bringing their videos online. It was really at the beginning of that. We were just kind of seeing that on websites and, you know, the proliferation of video content. Creating the first tech company. So were you in college on that first one? Were you like, you know, grinding away, going to class and then also– and also starting the company? Yeah, just splitting time, right? Just getting the– getting the hours in at school. And then, you know, we really honestly started out of the house I grew up in. We were in a back room with some new computers that we bought, and had high bandwidth and I think DSL connection or whatever that was needed to kind of get going. And, you know, it was an exciting time for sure. It was, something that we, you know, didn't necessarily know what I wanted to do with my life. But I knew I wanted to work with my brother, and that's what we sought out to do. That's awesome. So then, so you're in college. You, you know, start this company with your brother. You guys are starting to go, go at it and, you know, it starts to go pretty well. But then all of a sudden the idea of AudioEye. Can you walk through our users, like how did it come about? Was there a moment in time that you're like, “Whoa, this is, this is going to hit.” Because this is early on. What, like 2007, 2005 that you're doing this? I'm not dating you, Sean. Yeah. I– Just throwing it out there. Even earlier, yeah, actually it was, you know, 2002, 2003 actually. When really early on in those first few years of working together and building out this company. My brother had come back to the office, a small group of us, and just shared with us the, you know, the fact that he had just gotten back from an eye appointment, and they had diagnosed him with a degenerative disease in his right eye. And ultimately him sharing that is the genesis for AudioEye today. It's, you know, it got us thinking about, you know, the things that we were building at the time. Everything from the video content to these rich interactive experiences that we're building for clients. Using a lot of flash, right? Yeah, using flash. Macromedia was the the tool of the time, right? So I think it really got us thinking about, you know, how on earth does an individual with disabilities access that content? And how does a blind individual in particular, you know, use a computer and navigate the web and everything else? And that's when this whole thing started. It was really just discovery around that experience for blind individuals in particular. And one of the first things we did, we had an aunt that worked at an organization called Sun Sounds of Arizona. They specialize in reading content to blind individuals. And we got with her, and she brought us to the table, brought my brother to the table with individuals with disabilities that were using accessible technologies to navigate to use the computer and everything else. And so that was really our first experience with seeing a blind individual use a computer interface and use the technology at the time, which was JAWS, and still is today, obviously. But, you know, that was– that was really just, you know, our first exposure to what that experience is like. And that's where the light bulb went off for us. It was like, hey, how can we maybe create a better sounding experience? And the initial idea was the AudioInternet. And uh– Actually, it's a funny story, Sean. Just the other day I was digging through, as we’re, you know, moving offices. I was digging through, I found like the old original sign that was like AudioInternet before it was even AudioEye. So, definitely get that. So, you know, you started there and then you know walk us through the journey. Hey, you started off with this idea of the AudioEye– AudioInternet and quickly realized that, hey, that might not be the best path to go down. What was that pivoting point? What was that, you know, what was that feedback and where were you getting that feedback from to really pivot to what AudioEye is today, which is, you know, delivering digital accessibility experiences for hundreds of– 100,000 clients across the board? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, the original premise for the company was probably the wrong idea, right? But it really sparked us on this path that, you know, has been very fortunate for us and for the organization. And just in terms of, you know, wanting to create a better experience. And originally, we were very interested in making the audio quality improved, right? And then that slowly over like, within a five year period started to morph into text to speech. And then it was like, okay, how could we do more with text to speech? How do we automate, use that automation layer to make this more practical. And– so then we, you know, zeroed in on that and built some– And what, what years was this, Sean? Like, was this like 2005 to like 2008? You're like, hey, we're going to try to create like a browser based, you know, speech to text web. And like that was those years of like, you know, listening and trying to figure out, hey, like, how can I go to a website, click a button, and have it read to me? Absolutely. Yeah, so originally was that 2005 to 2010 time period where we were kind of looking at, you know, creating a keyboard based user experience. Allowing users to command the control of their web experience with keyboard and hear an audible, audible feedback that would allow them to navigate. And there was a, you know, a navigation system centered around all of that. And, you know, it was ultimately just a series of years where we were learning, getting feedback, sharing ideas. In a lot of ways we were busy with our other ventures, right? And so it was Yep. kind of always in the back burner. But one of the things that we did was as we would meet, you know, business professionals or investors or, you know, smart technologists that had good ideas, we would share their, our ideas about AudioEye with them. And, and, along the way we would– we kind of accumulated, you know, a good number of folks that when the time was right we're going to be standing by and ready to support. And sure enough that came to fruition. We really started focusing on AudioEye in earnest in 2013. And at that time my brother and I kind of finished out some of our earlier ventures and became really dedicated to focusing in solely on the idea of AudioEye and taking it to the next level. So– I heard in the beginning, like when it was text to speech. I think, you know, and for our listeners, I've been along the side with this journey with Sean since 2012 and I think like the first time that Nate ever pitched me, he was like,“Could you imagine coming to Snoop Dogg's website, and Snoop Dogg’s on the site and you click a button, and it's like Snoop Dogg's voice that’s like, ‘Hey, welcome to my website.’” Obviously cue Snoop Dogg’s voice. I can't do it, and I'm not gonna, not even gonna try. But I thought that, you know, that was an interesting idea, but there was like– then we shifted, right? Like 2012 to like 2016, I think if we look at the history of AudioEye, that's where it was like light bulbs were going off. And it was like, whoa, we are actually tackling this problem way wrong. We need to do it a separate way. So, you know, what did that time frame from like 2012 to 2016, 2017, what did that look like from your eyes? I remember some very pivotal moments with the NFB, the AFB, where we, you know, took a ton of feedback and came back. But what, you know, what in your eyes did it from a product shift and just a perspective shift, what did we do? Yeah, so I mean that was a really exciting time, a lot of learning. You know, we really had technologists that kind of get us where we wanted to go. We had, we had capabilities of the browser technologies had caught up and done away with Macromedia. And so we could do a lot of– a lot more things that we couldn't do with HTML5 and whatnot. So we were kind of, finally able to kind of create a very practical solution. And in doing that, you know, showing it off to people and having, you know, a scalable model in place was something that we achieved early on. But the feedback we got, of course, was just like, look, you know, we like what you're doing. It's great. It creates a very specialized user experience for sure. But what about those users that come to the user experience that have their own assistive technology? And, you know, how do we help improve that experience, right? Because no one wants to learn, you know, a bunch of new tools every time they go to a different website or whatnot. So, you know, of course, that was primarily the feedback that, you know, we were interested in and wanting to learn more about what we could do with the technologies that we were creating. In short order, you know, we realized, look, we're asking our clients to implement our technology, what else can we do with it? And that's when we started looking at the way in which we can use JavaScript to manipulate the DOM and how we could ultimately test for issues of accessibility and remediate. Yep. And to what extent could that be automated? To what extent could there be, you know, a manual component to that process, everything from the testing to the fixing? And that's when, you know, ultimately things got really exciting because now we're solving a real business need. And, you know, coinciding with that, some of that timing was an uptick in litigation, right? Yep. Something we always talked about. Something that we had always, you know, kind of believed would happen, you know, started to happen with our phones ringing and businesses really kind of just looking for help, looking for quick, quick answers to tough problems that they didn't understand. And with our approach towards accessibility– using the JavaScript to test and remediate was really unique in the marketplace at that time. And, you know, that's really where we started to get our feet on the ground. Yeah, I remember those times, Sean. I mean, it was like– it was like this strong pivot in like 2012, 2013, and all of a sudden it was like, hey, we need to, we need to like, make these sites accessible to the WCAG success criteria. We started writing the rules engines to test against that. We started to try to figure out how we could get manual users. And I really think of like 2012 to 2016 as us figuring it out. And then as we look at where we are today and where AudioEye is today, I mean, that was scale time, right? Like 2017 to like 2023 and beyond where we are is, you know, scaling and how to get more manual users into the platform. And what is that journey been like a little bit, right? It's from this crazy idea, Snoop Dogg's gonna talk on your website.[Laughter] To we're actually going to try to make sites accessible to the WCAG success criteria by trying something no one else has really done before, by not just doing it at source, but using DOM manipulation, to a full set of service offerings from source code feedback, to JavaScript, to automated testing, and scaling that to 100,000 clients today. What did that journey after 2016 look like? You know, it was a long one. But you know, it was ultimately, it came down to listening to a lot of, a lot of feedback along the way, right? We realized we needed to do more with our technology, have better ideas in terms of solving actual issues for individuals with disabilities and, of course, businesses that are looking to do the right thing. But also, you know, addressing real problems in terms of litigation. You know, once we got through the years of hearing the no, you know, hearing those businesses that were saying, look, we love what you're doing, but I don't have funding or I don't have– I don’t have any way to really procure this type of technology because it was so new and different. And we're also in the face of, you know, traditionalists of a very long standing process in terms of consultative approach to solving the issue. And so, you know, we were up against a lot of a lot of obstacles. But once we started, once we got through that and we we proved ourselves with this business or that business, and it really did start to snowball. And but it wasn't fast enough, right? Because we had been at this for some time and, you know, we had investors that were looking to, you know, understand what their return was or understand, you know, what the end game was. And so, you know, we couldn't help but ask ourselves, how do we scale? How do we bring this to more, more clients at a faster– at a faster clip? How’d you do that? AudioEye, we went from, I think like, 50 clients, 75 clients in like 2016 to 100,000 clients in 2023, and we're growing by thousands of clients a month. What strategy was implemented to go do that? Not just from the tech side, but like, what, what strategy was implemented to, to go scale that across the board. Yeah it came down to looking at the ways in which we could partner with our clients and finding niche providers that had their own customer base and presenting an opportunity for us to get our technology sold to that customer base, right? So solving a business problem for that CMS provider in terms of compliance and making sure that the experience that they're providing their end clients is an accessible one while solving the needs of their individual clients at the same time with regard to, you know, compliance protection. I think I remember that, that meeting– like some of those meetings. I think we were sitting in the Tucson office Sean, I think it was like 2017 and I was like,“Why don't we go to the people that are building these websites?” Because these bankers have no idea what the heck is on their website. But there's these companies that are building hundreds of websites, you know, for bankers and restaurants and so forth. Yep. The light bulb kind of went off, right? And it was like Absolutely. hey, we can we can hit both. We can manipulate the DOM. We can make the JavaScript remediations, and we can take those source code feedbacks of what we're delivering and go work with the platform to go change at the source code. That for me, I'm like, gosh, that was the light bulb, right? Yeah. Because we, there were, there was this hesitation of like, could we fix everything with just JavaScript, which like even today, hey, we're the first to say you can't fix everything with JavaScript. There's still this manual component. And I think that manual, the identification of being able to understand that, hey, with all the data set that we get with the JavaScript, we can go work with the teams at the source code to make those remediations. That was the scaling opportunity for us. Absolutely. And it was able to scale, solve the problems, and be able to, to deliver it across the board. Yep. Yeah, I was that, you know I remember those early partner conversations with regards to the banking provider in Texas, Yep. right? Where they, banks were getting hit pretty hard at the time and we were, we were getting little base hits in terms of getting clients onboarded quickly and efficiently. But nearly, wasn't nearly fast enough. And then by partnering with that CMS provider, we were able to quickly get to onboard, you know, hundreds of clients at a time, right? And then, it was natural that we would look at other industries, everything from K-12 education to the dealer space, you know, just looking at restaurant– Yep. restaurants CMS providers and whatnot. A good number of them where they're, under a lot of duress with their customers calling and asking for support and needing a solution fast. And, and we were really right place right time with the technology to cater to that need. Absolutely. You know, you talk, you talk on these Sean, and it's like, wow, 2012 and there was four years and then all of a sudden it started to figure out the idea. Then all of a sudden it's scaled. But it's never easy when starting a company and there's a lot of things that you have to just kind of figure out, and you kind of have to have this like mantra that you use across the board. What was, what's maybe something, for our listeners, like what is something that you used along this journey? I mean, 13 years now we're talking since 2010, 13 years of going at it with accessibility. What are some of the mantras that you used during, during those times that like, you know, hey, you thought you did it wrong or you thought that, you know, it might not be solvable to keep yourself going and honestly, to keep the– to keep the passion of all the other employees at AudioEye pushing forward? Yeah, you know, I mean took a great deal work ethic. You know the long, long days where you know day after day you go out to the parking lot and you're the, you know, the you're the only car that’s remaining.[Laughter] And so, you know that kind of just becoming a norm for a good number of years consecutively. You know, that was a lot. Yeah. You know, a lot, at the end of the day, it just came down to faith and like just understanding that, you know, your hard work works gonna pay off. And I think, you know, just doing the right thing by people along the way. You and I had the mantra, this believe mantra, you know, I think we would sign our emails. Yeah. Just like no matter what, believe. You know, have faith. It's going to– it's going to come to fruition here. It's going to, just keep, keep blocking and tackling and doing the things that we need to do. And sure enough, we were able to overcome a lot. To really start having success in the marketplace. Damn near got it tattooed on me we were saying it so much.[Laughter] Yeah. I mean, you know, that's really what I think, you know, to the point. And this is just so fun for me, Sean to like sit here and talk to you because it's like reliving the last ten years of our lives of how we got here. And– and, you know, all the tough times. But like you said, just belief. And now just knowing that, hey, we're delivering 2 billion remediations to the Web for people with disabilities and that number is growing, you know, by the thousands every single day of how many remediations and what is truly the impact that AudioEye is having to the Web for people with disabilities. And not only, like one thing that was super cool for me is I got to see this LinkedIn video the other day. We have this new thing called the A11iance Community. Sean I know that you're aware of it. You know, it's individuals with disabilities that test our websites. And I think there's this moment the other day I was like on LinkedIn and I saw this new member of the A11iance Community that has a disability, that it's like their first job that they've had where they're able to contribute, and able to utilize their assistive technology skills to drive revenue and drive income for their family. And that was a moment for me, I just got chills. I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. Those long nights and, you know, those thousand times of saying believe, like are coming to fruition on what we're doing. But there was like, there a few moments that are like, whoa, this, this is actually going to work. And for me looking back at it, I think the FCC working with Dusty Laun, I think, you know, working, with some of the partners and seeing the scale grow where all of a sudden it's like 100 orders in a week that we’d see come in with new websites. But what were some of your like moments where, you know, you saw that, hey, this is going to work not only the company but the style, right? We took a different approach to this. We took a JavaScript approach while the entire market was in a consulting model that truly wasn't able to scale it. But what were those moments that you saw that you were like, wow, we're on the right path? One story in particular that stands out is definitely, you mentioned Dustin Laun. Yeah. Dusty was, played a pivotal role in our success. He, you know, I was thinking about it more the other day and the way in which we were introduced to Dusty was really unique. And just for our users, Dusty was an individual that we got introduced to with the FCC. He was working a big project to get this project going. But yeah, Dusty was our, was our contact at the FCC. Yeah, he had a special role. Yeah. He had a special role there at the FCC as a kind of an advisor. And he had a lot of, I guess, the ability to take action Yeah. and pull the trigger on certain things, right? So, I was thinking about, at the time we were at it, I was at an investor meeting. I was at like one of those late night ones where you're at a restaurant, and you don't know if the people at the table with you are just looking for a free meal or if they're actually interested in like, you know, furthering the mission or like believing in the company and you know, ultimately looking to maybe make an investment. This one night was just a long one and definitely got the sense that, you know, probably, probably here for a free meal. But, you know, at the end of– tail end of the meeting I remember there's this one individual after having only spent like probably 5 minutes talking about the company and like, it was one individual that pulled me aside and said,“Hey, look, meet me at this hotel, at this, at this time in the morning, and I have someone you need to meet.” And of course, I was there next morning ready to go. And that's how I met Dustin. Really? Dusty. Yeah. We sat down in the lobby. I had to kind of give my elevator pitch. I told him about what we were doing, and then it was later on. It was, it wasn't too long after to where he set up a meeting with the FCC. We were able to pitch to a group of individuals there, the Section 508 team and whatnot. And they, you know, it was– it was tough meeting, just kind of selling our ideas and really talking to them about our different and unique approach in the marketplace. But fortunately, you know, having Dusty in that meeting and having his understanding of what we were doing, it wasn't long until a couple months later where the, sure enough, the FCC was kind of in a bind. They were looking to get the Consumer Help portal launched that was really essential to allowing U.S. citizens to report issues to the FCC through their website. And after a lot of a great deal of work on their side to get that thing going, the Section 508 team had issues with the level of accessibility. It was all form based and the screen reader users and testers were unable to access and navigate that experience. And so, Dusty gave us a call and said, “Hey, I'm in a bind. We got to go live here within the next couple weeks. I think your technology is what is really built for this, is that the case?” And we're like, yeah. You know, we spent the weekend doing what we do and by Monday we showed it off to the team, showed it off to their testers and got, you know, a resounding sign of confidence that they were ready to go. And that solution launched with AudioEye in place. That was really when we caught our first break. It's interesting you say that, Sean, because like I kind of go back to the thought process of that time. I remember that deal like it was yesterday. I mean, I, you know, love Dustin like brother. And, you know, I remember it was kind of like that– that time because they were using Zendesk and like, how could they fix Zendesk’s source code within two weeks? And it was like, all of a sudden that kind of clicked the same time of the whole, like, let's go attach ourselves to companies that don't have access to the source code. Nowadays we buy all these softwares all over time, like career learning, you know, career websites from, you know, these app and tracking systems or we buy these websites, where they build everything on a template on something that we don't control source code. And I think it was like, not only was that a pivotal moment to be able to say, hey, FCC’s utilizing our technology, but it was like this, this shifting moment that we had where all of a sudden we're like, wow, this is a bigger use case than just the normal development team or product team that owns a website. This is even for the mid-market businesses that are never going to be able to make their sites accessible because they don't control the code. And when you have seven different pieces of technology, that's way too much management to try to get it across the board. Now, hopefully in the future, all those other softwares are accessible by nature, at the code, and you know we're really focused on that. But that was kind of a pivotal moment as well. One other thing, just on like, the kind of these moments. I remember, I was sitting in a meeting, I think it was you, me and then David and Carr. And for those of you that don't know David is our CEO, and Carr, Carr Bettis is our Executive Chairman. And we're sitting in a meeting and, and I remember that David, you know, asked, “How many clients do we have?” And I was excited. Like, this was the time of AudioEye where we were getting like 25 orders a week from, you know, partners. And I was like, We're on top of the world. It's really cool to have 25 clients when you only had two clients like three months earlier. So I was pumped up, like, you know, probably a little bit of ego, a little bit, a little bit of swagger because I thought we're doing something. So we are so small, small in scale. And I think David was like, “How many clients do you guys have?” Like how many clients do we have? And like, “We got, we got 400, 500 clients” or whatever it was. And he goes, “How many websites were built during the time we were in this meeting?”[Laughter] And I was like,“I don't know.” So I looked it up, I'm like,“Probably 3000.” He's like, “Okay, how the heck are we going to scale this?” And I think that was kind of another moment for me. That was like, long term focus, right? Like short term focus was getting into these platforms, getting clients and going. But long term focus was like, wow, we need to solve this for the web. Like, we need to start really thinking about how we build this for 5, 10 million websites, for, you know, 50 million websites. Like we need to think bigger. We need to think scale across the board. So I think, you know, that was another moment for me that kind of stopped us in our track of thinking that we climbed a mountain and then finally looked up, and we're like,“Oh wow, we just left the parking lot.” Yeah. And that was something great. And, you know, shout out to David and Carr for just– Yeah. believing in us, right? I mean, that was a, huge thing that just kind of helped our success was finding those investors and those leaders that, that really helped drive us during that time. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, we have been so fortunate to have Dave Moradi and Dr. Carr Bettis lead the charge, and you know, with regard to the company and also just this whole idea around scalability. Yep. You know, there's– we were, we just really weren't... We had the solutions and the know how to solve, you know, a website at a time or whatnot or, you know to have incremental level of success in the industry. But, you know, really had a bigger vision just in terms of looking at the way in which we can leverage technology to solve this on a broader scale which has been huge. Absolutely. And when we talk about like solving this at scale on a, you know, broader vision. I think it's like, brings me back to the 2015 days, 2014 days of being a disruptive technology. And we've heard a lot in the last, you know, let's just say the last years with the– year with like openAI and ChatGPT being a disruptive technology and, you know, things like Uber being disruptive. But like truly AudioEye was disruptive into the marketplace. There was this traditional model of consultings the only way to do this. But the web is still 97% inaccessible, like there wasn't– this wasn't getting solved at the source code. And with all these new technologies, it was just breaking across the board. And then you had us come in with this new idea and this new concept of saying, hey, we will manage accessibility for you. We will start to utilize manual testers to do this, but also, you know, write remediations at the source code for you. What was so hard about being a disruptor? Like what made that so difficult? And even today it's– there are still difficulties that we face in the market with this today. But what was in your view was so difficult from that perspective? Yeah, I mean, lots of objection, right? Just in terms of this idea that we should ask our clients to implement a code onto their website that has a lot of capacity to make improvements and to run tests and whatnot. But I mean, I think, at the time when we first started doing this, it was difficult enough to convince a website owner to include an accessibility statement. Or just to invest in access– it was, it was hard enough to explain to someone that a person that's blind navigated the Web. Like that was like, No, yeah. that was like foreign to a lot– Yeah. A lot of, or not only just individual that's blind. Like maybe even, you know, hey, someone that has epilepsy could be affected by the way that you present your digital content. Even today we're doing education at that level, right? Yeah. To educate a prospective client, to say, look, this is what this is about. Digital accessibility is a thing, and here's why it's important. And so, you know, doing that early on took a little bit more time. I think, just in terms of educating the marketplace with regard to the importance of the issue. You know, who impacts and how it's, an important thing. So once you get beyond that hurdle, then it was like, okay, you know, if you talked about just even implementing an accessibility statement on a very basic level that was like, oh gosh, you know, I already have enough things in my footer of my website. I don't need another one, right? So it's like, not only did we want to do that, but oh, Mr. Customer, you should implement this, this little icon on your website, and that should be displayed on every single page view. Yeah. That was, you know, something that hadn't been done with regard to accessibility. It really put accessibility on the map in terms of demonstrating that websites have a place for accessibility and are prioritizing the issue of digital inclusion in a new way. Yeah. So that was, that was pretty impactful for sure. Every time you have to say that you're going to try to do something that the industry really doesn't know about yet, and then there's also, you know, this pressure of legal pressure versus the right thing to do. Right? Yeah. And I think it's like, the legal pressure started to rise and rise and then people are like, I need to do this because of legal pressure. And it's like, no, you need to do this thing because it's the right thing to do. Right? Right. People with disabilities need access to web, and I think like, no one drove that home more for me than Tracy Jordan, Right? Tracy Jordan was an early, you know, advocate that we worked with. She's visually impaired. And, you know, she would help us understand how important it is for individuals with disabilities to have access to digital content and really the independence that drove. So I think it was like that first education level of, it's the right thing to do. Also, there's this legal pressure and finding the balance for companies. And then on top of it, approaching this with JavaScript and approaching this by manipulating the DOM and approaching this different than an entire industry has, has definitely had its challenges. But you know, one thing, Sean, I'll give you credit for, just everyone at AudioEye, you know from David to Carr, and everyone that's still here today is, you know we're really pushing in one vision to make the web as accessible as possible for all users. And even when the hill is huge and we're trying to run up it, you know, we're finding ways to do what's right for the users. Whether it's our A11iance Community, making sure testing is getting done, making sure the JavaScript is getting the most up to date testing suite. Really it's all with that one vision and one goal in place. So, definitely a lot of hurdles in disrupting. But you know, definitely a lot of, a lot of things that we've been able to do to do it well. Yeah, absolutely. I mean we really spawned an entire market With Yeah. regard to, the approach, right? By asking clients to add that that little icon, invisible icon that's available to everybody, onto the website, it really opened up accessibility in an entirely new way. Yep. And for competitors or, you know, anybody else, it was really an opportunity to say, oh look! You know, this website has that thing on it. And– Yep. because I do it a different way, you know, that's a bad thing. And, you know, here's why. But at the end of the day, if you look at our approach to solving the issue for our clients and for their constituents and the individuals that they– and their end users, right? I think it's really always been a holistic process that's been supported by our solution. And, it really goes in the face of that traditional approach. But, you know, we've been successful at kind of staying true to what is important with regard to digital inclusion and building our solution and services around that. Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. And you know, one of the big things I think we've just learned throughout the years, and like we're just getting better and better at is, you have to test with individuals with disabilities to understand the best use case, right? Yep. Accessibility isn't about making sure, it just meets the WCAG guidelines. For those of our listeners, The WCAG guidelines are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It's not just about those technical benefits. It's about building in users with disabilities to the testing process, making sure that they're getting validation that the site is usable. That's been a learning curve for me. You know, I grew up in a world of, technology solves everything. You know, my iPhone here solves everything for me. But, you know, truly testing and user testing is something that we've done a really good job of listening and building it into the process, building it into our marketing over the years. And we haven't always been perfect, right? Yep. Sean, I'll come out and say that, we haven't always been perfect, right? We were trying to solve this and do it in a scaled way, but where we are today has been awesome. Yeah, difficult to message it all, right? Yeah. And try to make it to where you grab people's attention and you convey, you know, the solution while not getting bogged down in the detail. So that's always been a trick. But, you know, you mentioned Tracy Jordan. She was really fundamental to our success early on where she gave us a call. One Yeah. day our phone rang. And on, you know, we picked up the phone and we got an earful in terms of the different types of things that we weren't doing right or saying things that weren't really necessarily understood. To the credit of our team. You know, we through– we flew her out, came to learn a lot about her. And Dr. Jordan is someone who was bitten by a brown recluse Yep. and lost her eyesight as a mother and a working mother at that. And, you know, it changed her life forever. And she's used that to build an incredible career as an accessibility specialist in her field. But her feedback at that time was just something that we latched on to. We listened. We made changes. We made sure that we didn't, I think from that day forward, you know, we tried to always make sure that if we were putting something out, you know, did it get tested for accessibility? Did it, you know, are we sticking to the types of rules that we want our customers to abide by? Are we kind of adhering to those– that same set of rules? Absolutely. Those types of things were all critical and came by way of feedback. Another one that, you know, we always think about is the input that we got from the AFB. Where, you know, we were demonstrating our tools and our capabilities. And one of the things that came up was just, you know, what about end users that need to report an issue or, you know, have, need to get some insight into a particular problem that they're having? And so that's where the Help Desk was born, and that's kind of been an essential tool that's been included in our tool set for several years now– a solid decade plus. Where end users can report issues. Those issues get fed into our specialists who can understand the specific issue and get back to the end user in a timely manner and actually take effective control of making the necessary changes should they be required. Absolutely. I always thought it was interesting at AudioEye. Like, you know, previously I was at a, you know, a B2C company, right? That was all just, driven off of the customer is the consumer. But when you work in digital accessibility, you know you have two different groups that you– that you're really trying to present to. One is the client that's buying the software or buying the technology and services that you're providing. The second is the user, right? Which the user, the actual individual with a disability that is trying to utilize that consumers website or whatever is being published to them. I always thought that that was like this interesting thing that took us some years to figure out as well. Is like, you know, what are the two that we're trying to feed? And I think it took me a long time to understand that it's all just one goal, right? The customer has to have the goal of making a site accessible for people with disabilities. And the individual with the disability has to have the one goal of being able to utilize that website. So really just creating one unified goal of, hey, the web needs to be accessible for people with disabilities. You know, and that's pretty much it. So, you know, with that I mean, AudioEye today, right? We sit, you know, above $30 million in recurring revenue. We’re, you know, in offices in New York, in Lehigh, Utah, and Portland, Tucson. I think it's just you and I, and Damien left in Tucson though, Sean. Maybe a few other folks, Kaylee and Matt. But really, what's really the future? Like what do you see and what is– what is the future of AudioEye and what got us here? Like if I said, hey, give me two things that got us here. What is that, and where do you see the future? What makes you so excited about where we're going? Yeah, I think what got us here and what's going to take us into the future is definitely are people, right? I think we've always just been backed by incredible technologists and also, you know, with the build out of our A11iance Community, getting the level of feedback that we– like we've never had before is just incredible. You know early on, I think, you and I remember working with Pete here in the Tucson office, and Pete was an individual who was– became blind as a product of a work accident, right? And he kind of reinvented his whole life around that as being a father of two children. And, you know, he became an accessibility tester for us, provided invaluable feedback in terms of making our products better. And, you know, testing our client websites and everything else, right? And building a technology– and building a testing team around that, was critical. I think today we've kind of, have an incredible amount of resources that are really focused on that single goal of eradicating digital barriers. And I think that's really what's going to be the difference as we look to the future. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more, Sean. I mean, it's, it's been fun. Like all these stories, right? I feel like you and I could go on forever and ever. I mean, it's been, it's been a lot of years of just great stories, but just, you know, hard times and overcoming them. And then just as we look into the future, like some of the things I'm just excited for is, you know, we're taking a different approach even than we were three years ago. We're coming out with this new software development lifecycle tool. We're coming out with different ways that the alliance community can test faster for sites and that we can get feedback faster. So I'm like, I'm super excited to get us into that next phase of not only remediating sites through JavaScript and manual testing, but like this whole software development, can we shift it a little bit left and also be able to meet the client where they are? But it all comes down to the people. Absolutely. And what we've believed in from the beginning. So– Yeah, and they're the ones that are going to advance our technology, right? I think we've got, we've made incredible strides, just in regards to the capabilities and reaches of automation, and we're going to continue to push the envelope there. But also looking at, you know, different use cases, right? The, we've got the do it for you solution, kind of fully baked and understood. And then as we look at the, you know, do it for yourself crowd and providing tools that empower them that leverage the same test suite and it's kind of all baked into the same solution set, I think is going to be a very powerful, powerful thing in the marketplace. I think we're going to continue to see more sophisticated businesses out there that are looking to do the right thing and take steps. And they're going to have different approaches and different needs. And we're really building our, technology stack to address those different needs in different ways. Absolutely. And, we've met so many awesome people along the way, Sean. I think, you know, we have people that we met along the way that, you know, have gave us guidance. We have some new folks that are joining us that are– that have been influential, that have been like, you know, mentors to us that are joining us along in this journey that we're excited to share here in the future. But Sean, I just want to say, man, it's been awesome chatting today. It's been awesome working aside you the last ten years where it's you and I just walking out to the car being like, “Well it’s another night, and it's still dark out while we’re leaving.” Yep, yep. But you know, it's been so fun and just learning, you know, as much as we can. So thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for everyone listening. And let's make sure we make the Web a more inclusive place for all. So thanks, everyone. Thank you, Ty. Thank you. HearSay is produced by Sojin Rank, Mike Barton, and Sean Bradley, and edited by Grant Lemons. Be sure to check out the HearSay playlist on our YouTube at YouTube.com/AudioEye. That’s A-U-D-I-O-E-Y-E. If you enjoyed this podcast, and you don’t want to miss future episodes, give us a follow on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time when Don Torrez, Partner Manager at CivicPlus, talks about the seismic shift for accessibility coming to the government in 2024.