Fixing the Broken Web: Why I Joined AudioEye with Mike Paciello

In this episode of HearSay, Mike Paciello, Chief Accessibility Officer at AudioEye, discusses his journey in the digital accessibility industry—from founding the Web Accessibility Initiative that led to the creation of the today’s global standards, to his unwavering commitment to advancing the rights of persons with disabilities over the past several decades. He explores the changing industry landscape and the steps businesses must take in order to ensure an inclusive and equitable future.

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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

• 0:00 Introduction
• 14:08 Lessons Learned
• 22:16 Opportunity with AudioEye
• 33:45 Industry Shifts to Automation
• 45:52 Advice from Mike

Transcript

0:00

Disability and accessibility is all about civil rights Yep. and it is about, you know, the inclusion and equalization, for us in our space, technology. If you're a person without a disability and I'm a person with a disability, we should be able to use the same technology. Hi, everyone! Welcome to the HearSay podcast. I'm your host, Ty D’Amore, and I'm here today with AudioEye’s new Chief Accessibility Officer, Mike Paciello. I often refer to Mike as one of the OGs of Digital accessibility. For decades, he's had a huge influence in the industry, including writing the first book on web accessibility, founding TPG, and sits on the board of multiple disability organizations, including Knowbility. When I found out that Mike was joining our team here at AudioEye, I was thrilled. I've met and worked with Mike many times over the years, and his endorsement of AudioEye’s approach and willingness to join as an ambassador spoke volumes to me. Mike, welcome to the HearSay podcast. How are you doing? Hey, good, Ty, thanks for having me here. Good, good. I'm so happy to be talking today and speaking. I mean, this is such a big moment, for us at AudioEye, for you, for the web accessibility industry. But more importantly, our history dates back many years, and I'm just excited to have this opportunity to chat today. You know, Mike, where are you calling in from today? I am in western North Carolina. I live in a little town called Brevard, just surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains. I'm looking outside my window to see them there. But the weather, just like everywhere else, I think in the States, is very, very cold and windy today. Well, I'm in Tucson, Arizona, Mike. So I don't want to rub it in too much, but we're blue skies and sun out. I think we're the only place in the U.S. like that right now. I keep forgetting that. Yeah. Well awesome, well Mike for our listeners out there that are maybe new to web accessibility, maybe just a little background around, you know, how you got started in web accessibility, some of your history, and bio. Yeah, Yeah, sure. I mean, I've been in the industry for literally 40 years now. I started ‘83, ’84, got started as a technical writer for Digital Equipment Corporation, focused mostly on technical writing, technical documentation for computer software, operating system, back end systems type of thing. And ultimately, I got handed a project by one of my managers to take our documentation, bring it to the National Braille Press down in Boston and work with them to convert that documentation into Braille. Because at that particular time, being a technical writer and the use of markup languages was just starting to become pervasive and the use for technical writers, at that time. I realized that what we could do was take these electronic files and output them to Braille, large text and voice ready files, which at that time, they just didn't exist. You produced everything in Braille, one print page to three pages of Braille, and you can imagine what a volume of documentation look like. So using that as a basis I went out, did some research about Braille, came in contact with some experts in the field, like George Kerscher and Joe Sullivan, who is really the head of Duxbury Systems and their Braille translation system. And we developed an international committee that developed a standard that to this day is still supported by the American Association of Publishers for producing electronic documentation for people with print disabilities. Shortly after that, I moved more heavily into software as a whole. The web had not been invented yet by Tim Berners-Lee, but what was popular at that time was CD-ROMs and moving to distribution libraries like that. So I invented–I produced the very first industry CD-ROM with a fully accessible electronic documentation library for computer docs. Then after that, I started working as a volunteer with the MIT and the W3C. Of course, people know that Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web, sort of. The World Wide Web Consortium was eventually headquartered at MIT, got involved with it at that point. And long story short, Tim, Jim Miller, Daniel Dardailler, we got together. And as a result of some conversations that were taking place at the White House at that time, more specifically, Vice President Gore, we launched the Web Accessibility Initiative in 1997 at the World Wide Web conference there. That, of course, paved the way for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which for all of us that are in the Web accessibility business, those are the guidelines that we kind of use. Most of the laws in the world today focus on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG as we like to call them. I did a couple years doing that. Getting the WAI up and launched. Judy Brewer directed it, and I decided to go into some startup opportunities. I invented a–created my first website at that time. That was actually the mid-nineties, 1995, I think it was, and created WebABLE, which was the first web accessibility portal. I got involved with some investors, VCs, Motorola Ventures specifically, got some support there. Then started my real namesake company, TPG, in 2002. Which ultimately led to really the gathering and the collection of probably the world's most well-known and prolific set of professionals in the accessibility space for consulting and professional services. I sold TPG in 2017, primarily, not because I wanted to. But my wife, my first wife was dying from brain cancer. I decided to sell the company and retire for a few years. Kim eventually did pass away in 2020. And I was, kind of came out of retirement just recently, within the last couple of years, but still fully fledged and fully vested in the accessibility model. Well, Mike that is some, you know, bio and just congrats again on such a great career and successful career. And, you know, really, really sorry to hear about your wife. But now back in– coming out of retirement a little bit here and jumping back into doing what you love, and, you know, you've done it so well over the years. Every single time that I got involved, into web accessibility, it was, “Hey, go listen to Mike talk.” You know, “Go listen to what Mike has to say.” And, you know, just for years you've been a cutting edge leader in the digital accessibility space. That's news to me, kind of hearing some of the print accessibility that you got your career started in. But also just hearing your journey, it sounds like you got to meet some amazing people along the way. You know, from White House visits to working with Tim Berners-Lee. Is there any one that really stands out to you or is there any experience that stands out to you that you look back at your career and say, wow, that was really cool? Yeah. I really enjoyed that. Yeah. Well, Tim, Tim, quite honestly, now I've met Vint Cerf. Vint Cerf had a good hand in inventing the Internet. I've met a lot of other people who have also, you know, been involved in very profound ways. The first guys that, over at NCSA at University of Illinois in Champaign, Chris Wilson, and on the mosaic browses. But Tim, I'd have to say, is a person who I not only met and got a chance to work with and talk with, but he was an– he was a person who had an intrinsic interest in accessibility. Everything that we talked about, he bought into right away. And he created the Web as a means for communication and a vehicle for, you know, for relationships amongst people, amongst many other things. And he always had a strong voice. When we launched the Web Accessibility Initiative, he did a great job of promoting it himself and doing things. So I would say he was probably the person who had a great influence on me and appreciated his time. He and I, and the group of folks, we got invited by Vice President Gore down to the White House. We had the first meeting of– this is before the WAI was even announced. And that was pretty impressive. I think that was my first time at the White House at that particular time. So that was pretty cool. Meeting vice president, taking a tour of the White House and things along those lines. That sounds pretty darn cool to me. I hope one day that I can say that was my first time visiting the White House. That would be pretty cool and such an accomplishment. And you look along your career, Mike, and as you were your going, was there a personal connection that you had to maybe someone in your life with a disability, or was there, you know, any driving force? Often times I’ll hear, you know, Sean Bradley just was on the podcast with us, and Sean was talking about the founding of AudioEye, and AudioEye really came from his brother having a, you know, disability that was going to make him go blind over time. Was there any personal connection that you had that really was that driving force for you throughout your career? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. It's a great question, Ty. I think in that context, I'm kind of an outlier. Yeah. And a lot of people do think because my wife had been sick for a long time, she suffered with brain cancer for 17 years, that that was my personal connection. But that really– that wasn't until the early 2000s, and I've been working in this business since the mid-eighties. So, frankly speaking, for me, it was, you know, I got this offer to take on this project, and it just interested me right away. I was working with Markup languages, which were new. You know at that time, it wasn't called SGML, it was called Gen Code by Goldfarb. And then we got into it. So here I was working with new technology as a technical writer, and now with a population of individuals who had special needs, right? We call them print disabled because it wasn't just the blind and visually impaired. It included, for example, individuals who didn't have fingers or maybe fine motor control or even missing limbs. So they couldn’t turn pages or type on a keyboard or otherwise. So for me, this was, I hate to use the expression, but it was like a calling– Yeah. a professional calling. As soon as I– soon as I started working it, I got more and more excited about it, got more passionate about it. I saw the difference it was making in other people's lives. And it's the same thing that keeps me going today. Yeah, I get that. When you say it's a calling, right? I think when I got involved in digital accessibility, I looked at, you know, the way I was raised. And I was raised actually–my parents raised kids in foster home. And, you know, I started talking to my mom a lot about, you know, these different things that I was learning. And a lot of the things on assistive technologies or cognitive disabilities, a lot of things that they would learn with, you know, kids with special needs or individuals with disabilities that were in the care, were things that naturally they were doing the entire time and really helping. So it was one of these things for me when I got going, I was like, wow, this is so cool. Because I'm able to see these things that I'm applying into my life and how now I can help people with disabilities and really help make the world more inclusive. But I'm kind of in that same boat as you, Mike. There was no like direct personal connection. But then when I opened my eyes and really looked across the board, I was like, wow, you know, a lot of things are universal access or a lot of things that, you know, accessibility touches are true universal access. And that was really cool and still something that I see every single day come into work. Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that, in fact, because of disabilities, and of course now the convergence of technology and its space, that many things that have been invented over time really were the result of of trying to make things easier, better for people with disabilities. I mean Vint Cerf himself is hearing impaired. I'm pretty sure his wife as well. And that was one of the ways of being able to provide two way communication through text messaging or through, you know, through their– I'm sure they were using VTs at that particular time. But that was the way that they could communicate easier without having to go through a phone and interpreter and etc., so forth. So there's a whole plethora of people that have made those kind of inventions. The Department of Defense and the United States government often test people with disabilities because it allows them to think through scenarios that, you know, individuals who who are, you know, in the military find themselves in. Immobile, Yep. right? Yep. Or in the dark, not able to hear. You start to put those things together, and you understand why they've made such a strong investment in this industry. Absolutely. It's like, you think about just Siri on our iPhones, right? Yeah. How–look at that feature. We all use it. But think about the feature set from being able to just use, you know, voice to text. It's Yeah. such a great accessibility tool as well. Exactly. So, you know kind of transitioning into, you know to starting TPG. I've known TPG since I've been in the industry. Just the respect that everyone has. Like you said, you assembled such an amazing team, and then TPG was extremely successful. And to this day I know that they're still out there operating. But was there any business advice that you can give our listeners on starting a business? I know you had WebABLE TV. You still have that today. You know, any advice that you take that you're like, wow, we did this really, really well. It was something for us that helped us propel to the top and not only create a very successful, you know, company, but also transform an industry. And that's really Yeah. what you guys did, Mike? Yeah, The two things that I've always kind of worked by. There's a lot, I've gotten a lot of great advice over the years. But two things I've always kind of lived by. The first is that when I first got involved with Motorola Ventures, their director of that particular fund had a long talk with me. I had made a presentation. This is the first time I'd ever been in front of VCs. And so I give this first time presentation. I basically had been told, look, you'll make– you're going to make a million presentations, right? If anybody will even listen to you. One presentation and I made the final cut to the last three companies that they're going to go with, and then I made the final cut, and they made this investment. And I was like blown away. And I said, “Hey, I'm pretty good at this, right?”[Laughing] And then I walked in. I've got a table of lawyers, and technologists, and businesspeople, and accountants, etcetera and so forth. And they basically said,“Mike, look, we love you. You're like a face on a milk carton, right?” And back then, you know, face on a milk carton was you were famous because you're probably lost or kidnapped or something along that line. But everybody saw your face, right?“But you don't know anything about business, and you really don't know that much about technology, frankly speaking, right? So what we're going to do is we're going to take you, the person, and we're going to build a company around you.” And what you learn from that, and what I learned from that was... that there are other people that are a lot smarter than you. And if you give them the respect and the leeway to work within their framework, they will help you build up a great company. So that has definitely been something. I rely on other people. I look to them. I know that people are a lot smarter than I am. I just happen to, I just happen to get lucky, really. So that was the first piece of information. Yeah, and to that point, right, I think it's like, is it the famous Steve Jobs quote that is, “Always hire people that are smarter than you around you.” Yeah, yeah. and then, you know, just let them go operate and remove those blockers. Yeah, exactly. And now over the years, I've gained a lot of experience from learning from them and being a good listener. Which I really feel is a very important attribute of a quote unquote leader, right? You've got to be a good listener and be able to, you know, follow the lead of the folks that you surround yourself with. So that was lesson number one. The second lesson I learned, you know, which was equally important. And that was, an individual once told me–also a venture capitalists and an investor– there are two ways to really make it in business today. One is you build a disruptive technology, right? You build the Internet. You build the Facebook, right? Yep. And it takes off, and it becomes the norm, right? You build an iPhone, right? It becomes a social norm. Everybody buys it, and everybody's doing it, right? If you don't have one, then you're just not– you're not living in this world, right? Which I wasn't going to do. There was just no way.[Laughter] I’m not that creative. I’m not that creative. But the second one made more sense to me, and that's where the value was. And that was, if you can't do that, work on laws that enforce it. Yep. Well, you know, disability and accessibility is all about civil rights. Yep. And it is about, you know, the inclusion and equalization, for us, in our space, technology. If you're a person without a disability, and I'm a person with a disability, we should be able to use the same technology, the same level, same level of performance and expectations, as users. So how do you do that? You get laws to enforce it. And over the years, the last 25, 30 years, that’s exactly what we've done. We have laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 508 of the Rehab Act, Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act, the CVAA Act, Yep. the EU Accessibility Act. I mean, I could go on and on. All of those laws at one point or another, somehow I've had some involvement in. Or the guidelines that are coming out of the World Wide Web, right? So that is what has been driving this industry for the last 25 or 30 years. 100%. I mean, when we first got involved, it was like, read the Section 508 guidelines, understand what they're saying. That's really gonna be the position. And it's just so cool, Mike, that you got to work on that and be on the groundbreaking, you know, of really that coming into the market and coming out to the world. When you look at, you know, just all those different laws that you’ve worked on and you look at the numerous amount of projects that you've worked with, making digital assets accessible, making print accessible. Is there any achievement that you look back and you're like, wow, that was the one that really moved the needle, or was the one for me that stands out across the board? Yeah, I think TPG has got to be– the Paciello Group. That's like, we got it down to TPG so I wouldn't have to use my name all the time. Because again, it was around that mindset of, I didn’t want the focus to be on me, I wanted it to be on the team. And I built, really still to this day, I don't think you could have built a better team. Except most of them now all work for TetraLogical, which was started by Léonie Watson who worked for me at TPG. So I think to me that's my crowning achievement, if you will. And I'm very proud to have been able to work with all of those folks. Second to that probably is the launch of the Web Accessibility Initiative. That was huge at that particular time. Judy Brewer did a great job. I mean, she's left, a couple of years ago now. But it has become the go to place when it comes to web and web accessibility standards. The last achievement still has to be done, and that is why I'm here. There we go. And that's it, right? I mean, when you look at the Web Accessibility Initiative and just all the projects, it's just so cool. It's like, Mike every time that we talk, I learn something from you, and I learn that the history of where you guys set things up are really what we're trying to modernize and trying to really get to scale because the Internet now is moving so fast. Like since we've been on this call right now, there's probably been, you know, 100, 500, 1000 websites that launched. At least. Majority of those are going to be inaccessible as well. And we need to change that mindset. That's why I get up, when I open my computer every single morning, my mindset is, how do we change that? How do we make sure that when websites are launched, when we do–when we make apps. When we, you know, develop these awesome technologies that are delivering food to our doors, that they’re accessible for everyone, and not only individuals that are visually impaired, but cognitive disabilities, and individuals that equal access is across the board. Yeah. So that really drives me, drives me so much. So Mike, now kind of jumping into our history. You know, I've known you for, gosh, I think it's 12 years now. The first CSUN that I ever went to. I was, you know, kind of running around just trying to figure out the industry. I was with Mary Brocker, just the best energy in the world, just running me around the conference and introducing me to everyone. And she said, “Hey, you got to go hear Mike speak. You got to go hear Mike speak.” And I don't know if you're doing the keynote or it was a session that year. But I sat down, I was like, “Wow, he knows so much.” There's so much that's coming out that I'm learning here. Then I think it was, you know, the following year we were very new onto the scene and just trying to understand the industry a little bit better, understand what our position was because we were taking a different view on things, and we got to meet. And then, you know, I really feel like throughout my journey in accessibility, I was able to, you know, kind of get bits and pieces from you and advice. But now we look at it, and you're here with us at AudioEye, and it feels like a dream. It feels surreal. And, you know, I just think for our listeners it would be very interesting to hear from someone that has such a pedigree and a history in digital accessibility. Why now the move to AudioEye? You know, really as you join us on this journey, what do you hope to help us accomplish and to help the industry accomplish? Yeah, well, first of all, I appreciate the nice compliments. It seems like it's been longer than 12 years. But at any rate, what I remember about you was your excitement as a young kid, running around the hallways, and you had your badge, which is how I got started, except we’re 20 years removed. But you know, one thing I've always felt strong about, I kind of alluded to this earlier. I talked about my accomplishments, so TPG and the WAI, and I feel like there's a third opportunity here, and that has a lot to do with something that I feel strongly about. You've probably heard of Kaizen, right? It's a Japanese node of change is good, and sometimes embracing change can be a challenge for a lot of us. Well, we are in a period of time between the convergence of technology, the advances that are being made in AI and automation, you know, augmented reality, virtual reality, you know, mixed reality. These kind of things where it's really critical to involve users with disabilities. And so a few years ago, we started down this path now where people started to feel, let’s, you know, let's move more towards automation. So we could kind of scale the solutions because as experts and professionals, we're doing a lot of good by involving users and fixing problems for accessibility, software and web mostly, right? But we're not scaling at all. So you started to hear some discussions around companies like AudioEye, UserWay, accessiBe, who were building these automated solutions, overlay notions of toolbars that people could use and some of, you know, enhancements that could be injected into the code, the source code and in fixing it. Which is all well and good. The problem was that the communities of people with disabilities, the organizations that supported them in terms of, assistive technology companies and subject matter professionals who are experts in the field, saw these advances as not being advances, but rather almost like barriers–creating barriers. That became a problem. That's the perception, okay. Secondarily, there was this notion of mock marketing, right? Marketing and PR always become a problem. I've seen this and I talked about waves of technology and waves of things. So, you know, you ride a wave. You're like a surfer, usually takes a couple crashes before you get up on that board and you could start to, you know, have smoother sailing, so to speak. And what happened here was a lot of claims were being made that in truth, weren't really true or wouldn't stand up to any, you know, any real examination or audit. So what do we do? Well, I got calls from some industry colleagues, organizations to see if I could be involved in helping. I do have a background in terms of business relationship and management. My life has always been involved in trust and transition, being trustworthy, and that was how TPG– you know, I had a good, strong foundation. So how can we bring these sides together? We did. We literally got everybody together. AudioEye was involved, Dominic Varacalli. I was there with them. Yeah, I was there with them. Yeah? See– We were in Baltimore, I think. I don't even remember. I don't even remember you being there. That's–Yeah! [Laughter] I feel bad about it. Don’t take that as a slight, buddy. No, no. [Laughter] You were a nobody, Dominic was the guy. I was really quiet and just sitting there, man. I was Yeah. just the note taker. Yeah, we had some good people there. We had all the big people that we needed to be there. You know, Anil Lewis was there of the NFB. Matt Ater was there from Vispero. So we had all of the key organizations to be there. We came out of there with a consensus on supporting particularly the NFB resolution to make things useful and accessible. And I'll come back to that in a moment. And a commitment by both sides for progress. That was three years ago. Fall rolls around, I'm at M-Enabling, and we're still– I'm actually in a session, chairing a session, Matt Ater’s on one side, Samantha Evans from the IAAP is on the other side. And we're still,“What's the problem with these companies, why can't we get things together, right?” So I think a lot of it has to do with a lack of good communication, a lack of good, strong collaboration. How do we make these things work and how do we work together to resolve them? So I decided at that point in time, and frankly, a lot of it does have to do with discussions that you and I had there at the M-Enabling Conference, later with David, AudioEye’s CEO. I feel like putting myself in a position here, I could lead the effort. So change is going to come and change is going to be good. But I think using AudioEye as a springboard for leading that change to show, a, that we've got a company of people here, and I've only been here a couple of months, but we have a company of people who are just as dedicated to making technology usable and accessible to people with disabilities as well as equitable. We're not edging out any demographic in terms of disabilities, right? Bring that together, and at the same time meeting the other big goal, which is the scale aspect of this, right? I think the WebAIM survey that came out last year, I know they're in the new one now, said 96, 97% of all websites today. It wasn't really websites, it actually was just the home pages. If you look at that, right? Just the home pages were not accessible, right? Well, we've been in this business now with WAI for almost 30 years. Well, you know, what are we going to do? Yeah, we got to get to the source code. We've got to teach and educate the designers, the developers, the architects, the QA folks, you know, all of the disciplines in the engineering lifecycle. But we've got to scale because otherwise we're just pushing people off and out from being able to use some of the more emerging technologies. That's where I think what we're doing here in this company will make a difference. Fundamentally, we're developing tools for devs. We're building tools that scale that allow us to, or allow our clients and allow large companies as in enterprise level, right, to now, inject enhancements now and get those things done. As long as people start to realize that this is part of a process and a journey, right? Yep. I always refer to the software development lifecycle, the engineering lifecycle, whatever you want to call it. But there is a phase, right? Yep. Even if you're involved in agile lean development. And it's all about making progress. Once you hit your goal, you can pull out the old stuff, what's obsolete. So I think this is the way to go. I think that we're putting a lot of focus on users here, and we'll see how it plays out. Me being here to be able to lead that and make sure our messaging is right, our marketing is right, our technical teams are focused on users and user experience for people with disabilities, that's what I'm all about. That's why I'm here. 100%, and Mike, you know, I think you hit the nail on the head, right? When you look historically and even the start of AudioEye, our marketing wasn't always on point. But our process and thought, I think was always very, you know, cutting edge and very much in the right place of, we need to build this at scale. And what we did very well is that we listened. We listened to the community. We listened to how we need to solve this, and we came up with solutions where today now we're developing software development lifecycle tools that are really shifting left on the process, right? When we go work with big organizations and they have the development team to be able to do this at the source code, we're now going to be able to try to inject that in with them and start doing accessibility testing earlier. We're developing an entire training module to start educating designers, developers, leaders in organizations on how to integrate accessibility. But it hasn't always been like that at AudioEye, and we do take responsibility for that, right? At first, when we came out, we said, “Hey, we are super passionate about solving this.” And the passion sometimes, maybe got ahead of where we were from technical capabilities. I think now with working with you and working with the community, we're at a place where we really, really, really want to be able to solve this for everybody. Be able to solve it for that, you know,$20 million company that doesn't really have a marketing budget yet, but they want to make their site accessible. So we're going to implement in automation. Or maybe that team that has ten developers that want to focus in on accessibility, and we come in with software development lifecycle tools. So we're really excited to engage together, Mike, and really start to work in collaboration with the community to really drive to one goal that we all are. And I think we can all agree that our goal is to make the web the most inclusive and accessible and really be able to drive independence on the Web for for all users, no matter what your disability or what your ability is across the board. So– Yeah, and I see AudioEye investing not just monetarily, but investing human capital Yep. into this entire community and in this industry. So you're going to see us more out in front, attending the conferences, being involved with the standards development, being involved with the legislation that is being built nationally and internationally. That is what also the community of people with disabilities and my close colleagues and friends, you know, subject matter experts want to see. Make a contribution. Yep. Right? Make a contribution. It's just like interest in a bank, right? You just keep putting in some good things and doing the right things, and it adds up. So that's really where I feel like we're going to really focus on over the next several months and year, so. Yeah, absolutely. And continuing to invest with people with disabilities as your testers, right? I think Yep. that was, the last three years for us. We launched the A11iance Community, and what the A11iance Community is, is it's a crowdsourced model where we have individuals with disabilities. We come and train, we make sure that they have all the equipment, and then they test our website. And the insights that we get from those individuals is the best that we get from any users, right? It teaches us what we can do better with our products, what we can do better for our websites that we work with, what new features we can build. So I think, not only will we see an investment into the community, and into the events, and into being front and forth in telling our story. I still don't think we've even scratched the surface, Mike, of telling people what we do, and that's our fault, right? That's on our shoulders. We haven't done a good job of telling, you know, how our technology works or how our development tools work. But also we're going to continue to invest into the community because the best thing that we can do is, you know, get feedback from people with disabilities. That's going to help us advance and gonna make the Web more accessible. Yeah, we have folks here on the team that are individuals themselves with disabilities. That's a big thing that we've got to focus on and talk about. We just have to integrate them and become part of the bigger team, that's all. It's really not rocket science here. Yeah. And I think, you know, kind of leading into an elephant in the room that's just been going in to the industry, right, is I don't think AudioEye is the only one that's really seeing this right now. We just saw the UserWay and Level Access acquisition, and that really took a lot of people by shock. I mean, I think it was New Year's Eve too, Mike, that I got notified. I think you sent me a text, and were like, “Hey, check this out.” And the news just came out, and it kind of took me off guard. I was like, “Whoa!” You know, this is a company that has for years been strictly focused on source code, on, you know, technology tools to identify the problem. And they're investing in a company that, you know, very much so has been on the forefront of some of the misconceptions of overlay or, you know, going out there and really trying to solve this from a technology. And I think you're seeing those blend together. Do you have any thoughts on kind of that acquisition or what you're seeing from, you know, the industry that this might be shifting, not only here on what we push at AudioEye but there as well? Yeah, in truth I suspected this was going to happen. I mean I just couldn't see these worlds that were kind of, you know, colliding or, you know, they were going to come together. So while I was surprised myself by the announcement, I wasn't surprised that it happened. I was a little surprised that it was Level Access, you know. But I know Tim, and Tim is two things. He's an excellent business person, and he's an excellent technologist. And he really has a strong passion, you know, for inclusion and accessibility. But he knows, you know, and I'm sure his team around him, you know, knows that this is where industry wants to go. I mean, there's a point now where there's a business value proposition, too, that has to be taken into consideration. We can't get corporations, organizations, government, for profit, nonprofit, what have you, to really totally buy into making things usable and accessible from the shift left standpoint, Yeah. right? From the design, architecture standpoint forward. It's really, really hard. But, well, that's because they view– you call it a big elephant in the room. The big elephant is accessibility because accessibility is about compliance, Yep. and compliance is about mandates and laws, right? And the only thing that comes out of that is a stick–no carrot. Yep. There's no carrot for them, right? Yep. So that's another thing that I'm working on in the outside, to build carrots. You know, build incentives for businesses. So scale’s important. I'm sure that Tim in acquiring UserWay saw this as an opportunity to upscale. You know from his Yep. standpoint. Yep, it's going to increase his business footprint for sure. But I believe that this is something that we're going to see happen more and more. Yeah, I agree. And to me it's a step forward, right? And our responsibility now at AudioEye is to just go back, what we talked about is we got to get better at marketing. We got to get better at telling our story and what we do. I think we've cleaned up a lot of the, you know, hey, it's only JavaScript that fixes things. That is not true. That's not our statement. You know, you got to have the human element. You got to be able to teach and develop education from a design and development standpoint. But when I look at this UserWay and Level Access acquisition, to me it's a step forward for the industry. It's a step forward looking at it from a standpoint of, look, we know that we can't just scale this to the Fortune 1000’s in the world that have the money to be able to do this at the source code. We need to scale this to every single business. We as an economy are starting to become very accustomed to buying from a business that, you know, my favorite t-shirt brand. I think it's like, it has maybe 20 employees. I'm not buying my t-shirts from the Dillard's or the Macy's or so forth. But I guarantee that that company that I'm purchasing from doesn't have the entire development and technical stack to be able to make sure their sites are accessible. We got to find automation to be able to serve those clients as well. And I think that as we take this step forward, you know, in the community, it shows that, hey, we're we're starting to adapt to, you know, automation, we're starting to adapt to scalability, but we have to do it in ethical, in the correct way by blending it in with human resources and building it in with human testers. And so I'm really curious to see where it goes. I'm really curious and excited for the industry because at the end of the day, I don't look at Level Access as competition. I don't look at Deque as competition. Yes, maybe from a business perspective, but we all have the same goal in mind, and our goal is to make the Web more accessible. And if we can do that, that is the biggest driver. Yeah, a big part of what we get out of this. We–I always talk about here, I've been talking a lot about we have to walk our talk, right? Yep. So you were saying earlier, you know we've got to change the way that we PR and market our tools and in our products. We've got to make sure that our website is consistent with what we can do. Not what we can't do, Okay. It's okay to talk about what we think we're going to do, right. Yep. It’s okay to talk about the future where we see some opportunities and advances. But what can we absolutely do? What is truth and trustworthy? What can we hang our hats on? Look, you know, Tim knows this better than anyone. He works for a company that started out as SSB Bart, I think. Or Bartimeus and then SSB, they got together, right. But it was this evolution of validation services and tools and applications. And they came out saying, use our tool and you're going to find every error on every website, right? That you've got. And in short order we found out, no, that wasn't true. Yep. You need, as you said, we need users involved. There's got to be a strong user experience usability component so that we can understand how people are using their AT to interact with interface, and those tools cannot do it. We're here 25 years, almost 25 years now since those first tools come out, and we're getting maybe 40% pushing the 50% level of accuracy without false Yep. positives. So, you know, in a quarter century, you want to make it sound bad, in a quarter century does it all, we're still only halfway there, not even halfway there. So people have to embrace the change, as I mentioned earlier. They have to work together. We've got to–we've got to walk our talk, right. We have to be honest, make sure customers know that even our tool is not turnkey, Yep. right? It's Yep. not a one off solution. That, as you said, we're going to involve our experts on site here that we have here. We're going involve our users with disabilities, involve users in it. We're going use that whole SDLC as an engineering lifecycle and integrate all of the disciplines. And all of those disciplines will always have the think accessibility mindset as they approach it. That's what Yep. we're going to do moving forward. Absolutely. And, Mike, that kind of brings me into the next conversation of, you know, we in the last 25 years, we've only had an advancement, you know, 50% I think is the most that I've heard. Our testing team is always trying to write new tests and trying to find new ways. But by no means are we perfect yet. I feel like we have a really strong base. But we still need to get better. But then there's this advancement that hit us, you know, dead in the eye last last year, and that's AI, and AI is is the buzzword, right? Do you think that AI is going to have a massive play in where accessibility goes and in this industry? Well if you read the newspapers, technology journals, AI is the next Internet, right? It's the Yep next web. That's just the way people are looking at that. I'm not convinced that it is, yet. But I'm not Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or even the first CEO that I worked for was Ken Olsen, right? Who never believed in personal computers, right. I'm not that stupid. So yeah, I do think AI is going to have a fundamental and profound influence on what we do. We have already seen out of research and development how AI is being used to bridge the gap, close the gap for users with disabilities, profound disabilities, particularly individuals who have physical and mobility disabilities, quads, for example. Individuals who have had strokes. They can't speak. Now AI can be used as an AT, so to speak, to assist them in writing and talking and doing it quicker, better, faster. So yeah, I think it's going to have an awful lot of influence on our business, especially as we look for ways to scale, Yep. to enhance performance around accessibility, to make things happen better and faster. Yeah, and I think to the point of like, not only about solving the issue. I think when we think of AI in accessibility, it's like, oh, AI is going to solve this issue, and I like to think about it. And you know, I've been talking to our Chief Strategy Officer here, Mase, and he's working a lot with AI and applications with our dev team. I like to think about it from an educational perspective as well. How much can we utilize AI to educate developers to not make same mistake again? I'm not of the belief that in two years AI is going to be doing all the coding. I just, I think that's unrealistic. But can we utilize AI in the testing mechanics of, you know, hey, I'm building something, I want to utilize some type of AI that's going to identify a technique I'm using and then be able to teach me. I think that's the future. Yeah. And I think if we can do that, it hits the goal of shifting this left. It hits the goal of educating individuals. It also increases the level or decreases the level of entry and the barrier point on costs. Because so many times I get together with businesses and they want to do the right thing, and they want to make their site accessible, but they just can't afford it. And, you know, I think as we implement AI, we might be able to take a step and say, okay, well, if you can't afford it, then let's start educating you and let's start utilizing AI, because I don't think we're ever going to be at a spot where it fixes everything. But I do think it's going to help us in that development and in that educational aspect for accessibility. I'm excited where that goes. I think that's a great point, Ty. You're familiar with Teach Access and that organization, right? Yep. That organization that I had, TGP had a part in, in working with Larry Goldberg to get it founded at the National Center for Accessible Media, WGBH. But my point there is that, you know, we're trying to educate now at the university level, right? Yeah. And that's been hard to get this kind of technology, get the the educational material into the hands of the computer science degree students that are out there. AI I think can help us advance their technologies so that they can learn faster. What they don't learn inherently within the classroom will come out of the AI instruction, right? Yeah. So having something that self corrects them is ideal. Just remember, I think the biggest, my biggest concern about AI is what I think everybody's concern is, frankly speaking. Trustworthiness, which is a human endowment Yep. and conscience, which is another human endowment, right? So these are only things that we can do. So behind every great AI is a human being. And if we apply those principles, then I think we'll be headed down the right track. 100%. And I'm super excited to see where it is. I'm sure this year at CSUN it's going to be all the craze and everyone's going to be talking about it. So more to come Yeah. not only in accessibility but just across the board on AI as we kind of, you know, are watching this revolution in our eyes here. But, Mike, you know, what is one or two things that businesses can do? Many of you, a lot of listeners are going to be individuals that are in the accessibility space, but some of our listeners are going to be businesses that want to start their journey in accessibility. From all your years of experience and everything that you've done, what are one or two pieces of advice for it that you give to those businesses to get this journey started for them? Yeah, a great question. So, you know, to, you know, piggyback on your comment there it is a journey, right? It's not just a destination. So a journey means like anyone, if you're going to go on, do some trail hiking, right. And you've got a map and you've got a compass to get you to where you want to be. It takes some time, it takes some process, it takes some tools. Yeah. So I specifically want to focus on the tools, the tool development that we get that and get that done right. That is something that we're doing here at AudioEye, and I'm really, really glad to be a part of that, right. But also, I think what we need to do is firm ourselves up around the disciplines. So we need to get more engaged with our architects. We need to get more engaged with our usability and designers, right, more engaged with our developers, and more engaged even with our, on the back end, of QA and marketing folks. That's that engineering lifecycle I talked about. And with them, help them to appreciate, look, this is a journey, not a destination, and where each step and each phase of that development lifecycle, we need to think accessibility. Okay, how does this affect a blind person? Are we doing something in media? How does it affect a deaf person? Yep. Is it somehow mal centric or IR or VR? Well, what are we doing to enhance the usability and user experience, a person with a physical or mobility disability? If we think accessibility, in time, I think we'll achieve the ultimate goal, which is usability. Excuse me, accessibility will be invisible. It'll be a norm. It'll be a development norm that we'll just do. We won't be talking about shifting left because it’ll already be done, right. Yep. We do a lot of things today where we don't have to think about it, right? And the same thing should be true in terms of accessibility. So, that's one, I think, thing that we got to think about. The other thing that I think we have to work on is with our clients in particular, and that is to teach accessibility maturity, right? And that means, by that I mean we need to help them create a culture inside their organization that is very accessibility centric. Again, I keep talking about that think accessibility mindset. But people have a predisposition towards understanding, being empathic in nature, towards design and development of user interfaces and applications, emerging technologies so that they are usable, accessible, and equitable to people with disabilities. Those two things will go a long way. The last piece of this involves how do we get that business value proposition to really work and work well for us and for our clients? Yep, yep, 100%. Mike I think you took the words out of my mouth. And the one thing that I always say is, you kind of mentioned it earlier in the podcast and it's, it's so interesting. You said it is, I always tell people when you think about digital accessibility and you're in a room and all of a sudden the compliance officer is talking about it. Remind them that it's a human right, right? If you have a restaurant and a person with a disability can't come in and enjoy your meal that you cook for everyone else, that is excluding someone from a human right. And that is what I like to think, you know, hey, this is a human right for people with disabilities to have access to digital technology. And the independence that it creates is amazing for people with disabilities. So, Mike, I just want to close it out by thanking you so much for joining us here at AudioEye on this journey. I'm super excited for what we're going to do together, and how we're going to engage into the community, and get, you know, get the word out about what we're doing across the board. You know, so thank you again for joining us. Thank you again for all the guidance and mentorship throughout my career in accessibility. And, you know, let's go make the Web more accessible. I'm all in, all in, Ty. Thanks very much. Glad to be here. Awesome. Thanks, Everyone. HearSay is produced by Sojin Rank, Mike Barton, and Sean Bradley, and edited by Grant Lemons. And if you enjoyed this podcast and don't want to miss future episodes, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.