Technology that Empowers – Artificial intelligence (AI) and Accessibility

The picture below whilst appears to be "corny" - it explains exactly my sediment towards those living with disabilities, AI and machines. Technology truly has the power to change lives especially those living with disabilities and offering a different route in life that would otherwise not have been.

But the reality of the world we live in today is that we are surrounded by Artificial intelligence (AI) and we use it every day.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has great potential to push technology to assist those with disabilities even further. Offering the empowerment and ecosystem that pushes beyond the current physical barriers that tends to limit those with disabilities.

Technology in this realm is improving and beginning to make more of an impact in our everyday lives. Some of our well-known pioneers such as Elon Musk, Steven Hawking, and Bill Gates have already expressed concerns towards AI and the future with this kind of technology. They fear the future as the rapid growth of technology poses the risks of humans one day not being able to control their AI creations and the decisions they make. There are also grey areas about the success rate of putting moral and ethical decisions in the hands of AI or robots. Will they make the "right choice" in any given situation?

AI is already helping those with disabilities

Today, people with disabilities have discovered limitless possibilities for how they use the technology available to them from using it to write their papers or take notes in school, to importing their calendars with their important appointments across all their devices, to having their iPhone read everything that's happening on their device to them and more. Most people have a collection of apps that help them organise their life that incorporates AI.

AI and web accessibility

Through our research into accessibility it becomes quickly apparent that accessibility means different things to different people. The ideology of having a standard that becomes a one “fit for all” seems unlikely the deeper we research. This becomes more evident when accepting that everyone has different ideas as to what works well and what does not. Especially when factoring in that it’s human nature to have preferences and choices in everything we do.

We need ways that can automatically "measure accessibility" for each individual and then instantly apply the metrics learned to form solutions that alter information and the way we interact with information online such that content is tailored on a user-by-user basis. This is exactly the goal and concept of WoDifier (http://wodifier.cloud).

Visit the WoDifier website to learn more about our platform.


Original Article Link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/technology-empowers-intelligence-change-lives-those-kenneth-springer

The Internet and Disability — Making an Impact

This is a really interesting article written by Brittney Clouse on how the Internet on Disability is making an impact in a way never seen before (http://cerebralpalsynewstoday.com/blog/2016/06/09/impact-internet-disability/).

This was exactly the reason why Hueyify® (http://www.hueyify.com) was invented to change Internet Accessibility and make a difference to the world. Considering that the idea of Hueyify originates from a blind boy makes the journey even more exciting as we push towards our vision.

Hueyify's technologies will be made released to the market via the Web of DOTS (WoD) platform at http://webofdots.cloud 

The Great Internet Race

If you are using the latest version of your favorite web browser then you are probably already benefiting from the new web protocol called “HTTP/2”. This means your web browsing experience has just got a whole lot faster and you are already part of the Great Internet Race.

If you are still wondering what all this HTTP/2 mumbo-jumbo means - then this calls for a brief history lesson on the web evolution:

Surfing online and viewing a website was made possible by communicating through a special language called HTTP which was invented by a British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. Surprisingly, the HTTP has remained relatively unchanged for the last 20+ years despite the web dramatically evolving over this period of time. Thanks to Google who played a major part in spearheading the goal to speed up the web with the new HTTP/2 protocol because as history shows: it eventually became approved by Mr Nottingham who chairs the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) HTTP.

What makes HTTP/2 special that it speeds up the web when compared to the older HTTP is really a combination of a few things such as: compression of headers (eliminates much redundancy), multiplexing of data over a single connection to a web server (eliminates the need to create multiple connections wasting unnecessary resources) as well as being primarily in binary form (previously it was semi-textual content).

Enjoying a Faster Web Experience

To enjoy the benefits of the faster web speedup through HTTP/2 depends on a few things including:

1. Whether the web server behind the website you are visiting also supports HTTP/2.
2. The version of your web browser (if you have the latest version then it is already likely to support HTTP/2).
3. The web browser (i.e. Chrome and Firefox will only support HTTP/2 over secure Internet connections and reverts to the older, slower HTTP for plain-text connections. This was done deliberately and as an incentive to encourage those who host websites to upgrade their web servers to support the new HTTP/2 and force all communication to be performed over secured connections).

We’re pleased to state that the Hueyify platform supports both HTTP and HTTP/2 protocols for secure and “plain-text” Internet connections. The Hueyify platform will automatically accelerate any browser or “web technology” that is not HTTP/2 ready or enabled to automatically use the HTTP/2 for all outbound connections connecting to web servers and offer you a faster and improved web experience.

In fact if you are using Chrome or Firefox and connected to the Hueyify platform using “plain-text” connections then Hueyify will automatically use plain-text HTTP/2 communication when supported by websites. Effectively, offering you an accelerated and better experience.

At Hueyify we’re excited by the improvements made to offer better web experiences. Although we have seen much advancement of the web in recent times - we can foresee that we’ve only just briefly touched the potential of what the web can become.

Future of Internet and Web Browsing

It is apparent that there are preferences and choices in everything we do: from the way we do things, what we like and don’t like. That’s why at Hueyify we are working on an innovative platform that puts the power of preferences, control and personalisation into the Internet.

It is not a question of whether websites can be tailored and automatically personalised to each individual but when. You can register your expression of interest to be notified when the platform is ready to use at: http://www.hueyify.com/register

If you are interested in the Investment Opportunities with Hueyify then please contact us at: Investment Opportunities

About the Author

This article was written by:

Kenneth Springer

Founder at Hueyify | Thought leader for the next era of Web browsing

Your Website is not that Great – Here is Why…

If you’re reading this then no doubt the title must have been catchy enough for you to want to read and learn more. Perhaps you are bursting with pride after a recent redesign or rebrand on your website and am feeling confident that you do now have a super cool website. Perhaps you invested time and money to get the current look and feel that your website has today. After all, websites to some certain degree these days are an artistic expression on who you are and what you do. Furthermore, you may even have metrics supporting that things have improved since revamping up your website.

Are you still feeling confident? Or are you having second thoughts and now thankful that you followed all the recommended steps to build a great website? Ensured that you met all the web standards including accessibility standards, listened to the branding and marketing experts on what works well for your target audience, tested and checked it out across different browsers and devices?

The Question that Keeps on Playing on my Mind 

Long ago I asked this very question: “What makes a great website?” or more specifically what makes good web usability? In fact – this is the very question that keeps on playing on my mind.

It became quickly evident that it would be impossible for anyone to empirically claim to have the magic formula for what makes a great website without a deep understanding on the problems that websites impose. The Internet and its users are inherently complicated, in a constant state of change and always evolving.

In recent times there has been an increasing trend towards awareness on making websites accessible and a push to force compliancy or even enforce it with hard law. Creating awareness is great, however, enforcing something by law that doesn’t solve the underlying problem is a little short sighted and potentially creates problems.  This is because unless the criterion caters for every single individual it is immediately refuted and doesn’t provide the best ideal outcome for everyone.

Web standards, best practices, suggestions offered by branding and marketing experts do help improve to make better websites however they are not the means to the end.

Eventually it dawned upon me that what makes a great website is greatly influenced and subjective to each individual. After thinking about this more I set out to prove this by creating what I call the “three-door hypothesis” check.

The Three-Door Hypothesis Check

The three-door hypothesis check isn’t a difficult concept to understand.  It about putting three different spins surrounding a single point but arguably connected.

Consider the picture below that we created just to illustrate this point – three doors illustrating different times of the beach. Which door would you open and walk through to enjoy the moment at the beach?

Most chose the middle door of clear beautiful day at the beach and a few romantics chose the sunset. Personally, I would choose either the sunset scene as sunsets are always beautiful to watch or the gloomy beach scene, as it can be truly exhilarating to see the angry waves and feel the energy of the sea.

Using the three-door hypothesis as a check on good web usability, I would then think of logical questions and form three good hypothesis based on what the standard would suggest, what an expert or web developer would suggest and what formed my own personal opinion and run these past different people. I would always find that all three different offerings where favoured with good supporting reasons for accepting one and rejecting the others. Clearly the generalisation wasn’t so prevalent and in certain situations I even had swinging decisions where people changed after following up some days later.

It became more apparent that unless we tackle the differences amongst different people we can never truly claim that any website is great as there will be always someone who doesn’t like something or believes it could be improved or made better or simply wishes it was presented or caters for interaction in a different way.

I also felt that we could do better than just focusing on target market and increasing the reach and conversions within the group.  What happens when the target market changes and evolves over time? Or what worked yesterday suddenly doesn’t work tomorrow?

My understanding on what makes great website changed and was forced to think differently towards web usability and online experiences. I focused on imagining how the future of the Internet and web browsing could be. And suppressed thoughts on thinking about how difficult the problem is to solve or the impossibility of making websites appear “perfect” for each individual.

Future of Internet and Web browsing

It is apparent that there are preferences and choices in everything we do: from the way we do things, what we like and don’t like. There is no reason why this concept cannot be applied to the Internet where information via websites was presented in the way you want it to be, allowing you to seamlessly access and interact with any website in the way you want.

It is not a question of whether websites can be tailored and automatically personalised to each individual but when.

At Hueyify we are working towards our vision on a platform that would help contribute and make every website great.  The Hueyify platform has a learning engine designed to evolve and adapt with you with one purpose - to continuously ensure that your experience online is at the optimal.

You can register your expression of interest to be notified when the platform is ready to use at: http://www.hueyify.com/register

If you are interested in the Investment Opportunities with Hueyify then please contact us at: Investment Opportunities

About the Author

This article was written by:

Kenneth Springer

Founder at Hueyify | Thought leader for the next era of Web browsing

One Week After Google's Mobile Armageddon

It’s been over a week since the Google mobile friendliness has been introduced as part of their ranking system. What this means is that whether your website is mobile friendly or not will now be factored into their algorithm ranking. This is a major change particularly as people are searching more frequently from mobile phones.

Web pages that are deemed mobile-friendly will have a higher perceived ranking by Google than those that are not. In case you have missed it – Google said the mobile-friendly signal would take effect beginning on April 21. Which means it has been in effect for just over a week.

This change isn’t overall a bad thing and makes your website more accessible. Many people with severe vision impairments actually prefer to use iPad and if your content shows up nicely on the iPad then that is great. The screen size of an iPad is more suited as some have "tunnel vision" and for others it enables them to hold the screen more closely to their eye to see content. Both benefits which cannot be easily achieved on a desktop screen.

 

Checking for Mobile Friendliness

The most important point is that the approval isn’t on a website basis but rather on a page-by-page basis which is checked in real time. This means you need to ensure that every page on your website satisfies the page mobile friendliness test.

You can test it by entering the full page URL at:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

 

What happens if you Failed the Test?

If your website had failed the test then simply follow the instructions and feedback provided by Google.

Initially Hueyify website failed the Google mobile-friendly test. We actually had checked the Hueyify website on several different mobile devices of varying screen sizes and all were readable. Hueyify website was already using responsiveness and didn’t think there would be an issue. Clearly we were misguided and wrong.

However, it seems that Google didn’t accept our viewport widths (we were using fixed widths that degraded gracefully depending on the varying device screen dimensions). It took us a while to track down exactly what the error was since the Google hint feedback was vague and unhelpful.

Make sure you are using viewport tag and use the width=“device-width”. The moment you alter the width you will get an error from Google that in our opinion wasn’t technically correct. However, we can waste more time arguing about this point as opposed to just rectifying the error in a way that is suited for Google.

Additionally, we couldn’t determine what dimensions was Google using as part of the mobile-friendly testing. After some trial and error it seems that Google is testing the mobile based on the early versions of the iPhone screen dimensions. This means if your content fits nicely on about 320px then you will be fine and pass the test. Obviously, 320px is very narrow so you would need to make sure your website displays nicely on larger screens.

Take care that you can not simply just scale your desktop website version to simply just fit onto the mobile screen as this would mean the content for the most part is illegible due to too small fonts. Tapping is also impossible due to all the elements being spaced too closely together. Google can spot this when your scale factor is unreasonable and will report this back to you as an error.

 

Does this mean I need to maintain several versions of websites?

This is not necessary at all. The whole point of making your website responsive was so that you only needed one set of HTML and control the responsiveness through CSS3 or JScripting. For the most part if you follow the responsive design website then the changes required to pass the Google mobile test in our opinion is probably minimal.

If you are stuck as to what all this means then visit:

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/get-started/

You can find a whole wealth of information on website and responsiveness at the following links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design

https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/layouts/rwd-fundamentals/

The next evolution of the Internet

Internet has changed the way we live. Technology truly has the power to change lives. At Hueyify we are striving towards our vision on how we see the next era of the Internet and the Web.

It is impossible for us to sit still and calmly share with you what we are working on and our goals for the future of the Internet. Sometimes pictures help and at other times a video may do more. I'd say this is probably the time to say when a video is a must.

We have actually broken down the future in the Internet into several major steps and in each there is one core concept / idea that we are striving for. This is our first step. You may question why don't we just jump into the final vision? And that is a good question. However, from our prospective it is better to deliver once key concept at a time and evolve towards each key core concept / idea. In other-words we believe in evolution process of the Internet will be far more valuable than just jumping straight into the deep end.

It is hard to believe our beginnings started from humble beginnings in simply wanting to help others. The more deeper into the project we go and closer to our goal the more clearer our "why" we are doing this and the difference we can make.