AudioEye, Inc., the industry-leading digital accessibility provider, announced a joint effort with Localogy, the leading non-profit trade association supporting local businesses, to provide Localogy members with access to digital accessibility resources and learning opportunities through the association's knowledge center. "Over the years, Localogy has built a powerful network of organizations with a shared goal of helping local businesses navigate challenges and thrive. One of the key challenges for businesses today is making their websites accessible to people with diverse needs and being discoverable online," said Bill Dinan, President at Localogy. "We're excited to team up with AudioEye and provide our members, and the more than 30 million local businesses they serve, with opportunities to learn about AudioEye's digital accessibility solution and ways to ensure ongoing accessibility on their sites." Based on a recent analysis of 3,500 randomly websites across 22 industries, including healthcare, e-commerce, and employment, AudioEye found that 83% of e-commerce sites, 78% of healthcare sites, and 77% of jobs and career sites had accessibility issues that blocked a screen reader user's ability to complete key tasks, such as viewing product descriptions, completing a purchase, filling out an application, or booking an appointment.

Some reasons why that's the case are tied to the sheer volume of digital content and the complexity of the internet. For businesses and content creators who want to reach the widest audiences possible and meet the expectations of all users, including those with disabilities, the dynamic nature of content poses an ongoing challenge. Consumers today expect personalized content, interactive features, and intuitive interfaces to find information, shop, get entertainment, etc. This level of personalization requires continuous changes in content based on user behavior, preferences, and other data. Unfortunately, every change comes with a risk of making content inaccessible for users with disabilities.

With enterprises in the race to embrace digital change, other tech companies are doing what they can to make this happen. AudioEye, a digital accessibility firm, is no exception to this. They have embraced growing changes, like machine learning, to accelerate accessibility and help organisations achieve digital inclusion standards. Sean Bradley, CoFounder at AudioEye talks of why machine learning is so vital to today's evolving tech sector. Beginning in 2015/2016, businesses started reaching out to us having found themselves on the receiving end of website accessibility claims, despite having neither a) any control over their source code or b) any understanding of where to begin in order to address the claims.