Organizations Partner to Make Digital Job Postings Accessible to Individuals With Disabilities

TUCSON, AZ–(Marketwired – Sep 15, 2015) – AudioEye, Inc. ( OTCQB : AEYE ) (“AudioEye” or the “Company”) has entered into agreements with Chief People Officer, LLC (“CPO”) and Linkages, Inc (“Linkages”) to create accessible job boards designed to accommodate individuals with disabilities and help organizations locate and hire qualified employees while meeting the compliance requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).

The three Arizona-based organizations are partnering to make jobs available for individuals with disabilities, veteran wounded warriors, and America’s aging population. Linkages, the mission of which is to link employers with qualified candidates to ensure every person with a disability the opportunity for employment; AudioEye, the world’s leading provider of cloud-based accessibility software that makes the web accessible to everyone; and Chief People Officer have developed a cloud-based job board, Applicant Tracking System (“ATS”), to match candidates to posted job opportunities in an electronic format that includes full dashboards and complies with regulatory reporting requirements. Together, these three organizations are providing the nation’s only fully accessible ATS.

Linkages, which was founded by Tucson businessman Jim Click in 1997, received the President’s Award from Bill Clinton for Organizations Supporting the Disabled and has connected over 10,000 disabled people with jobs.

“Royalties generated by this collaboration will provide Linkages with revenue to continue the pursuit of its mission,” Jim Click noted. “It’s about people getting jobs. This pro-active team will fulfill that mission and help businesses become more effective. Every business should use this tool, as the opportunity to work changes lives.”

Individuals with disabilities often encounter difficulties in applying for jobs, especially online. Job boards are complex and usually do not work well with standard accessibility tools such as screen readers. Many forms are incompatible with Assistive Technologies, and websites are often difficult for the disabled to navigate. The Linkages Experience is designed to help both employers and job seekers connect the right job with qualified candidates. The technology can be added to a company’s existing job board or deployed as a stand-alone tool in a manner that meets the ADA and International Web Content Accessibility (“WCAG”) Guidelines. Employers are able to expand the pool of qualified potential employees, while job applicants are provided free access to the system and are able to more effectively communicate with prospective employers.

“Internationally, web accessibility is a growing concern for individuals with disabilities,” noted Sean Bradley, President & Chief Technology Officer at AudioEye, Inc. “At the same time, publishers of web content must comply with an expanding number of legal requirements that websites become more fully accessible. In the early years of the adoption of the ADA by business and government, employers were required to provide customers, employees and the general public with disabled parking spaces and ramps for access to buildings. Now we are providing ramps that allow the disabled to access the Internet.”

“In the U.S., Section 503 of the ADA has established targets for federal contractors requiring that 7% of their job opportunities be filled by individuals with disabilities and another 7% by veterans,” stated Mark Ziska, CEO of Chief People Officer, LLC. “This poses challenges to companies and the HR community — and we are focused on providing the technologies to overcome them.”

About Linkages, Inc.

LINKAGES, a non-profit organization, was the result of a unique idea proposed by Tucson business leader Jim Click, whose vision was to gather the often-overlooked resources of the city’s disabled workers into a central location, then make such skills readily available to the business community. He shared his dream with Dr. Ruth Mondschein, a pioneer in employment, training and arts for people with disabilities, and together they began the process of unifying the efforts of Tucson’s employers and rehabilitation agencies into the extraordinary resource that LINKAGES is today. Knowing that employment makes life meaningful, LINKAGES seeks to ensure that all people are given the opportunity to perform and be valued by working as a liaison between area businesses with employment openings and participating rehabilitation providers with qualified people ready to work. Since 1996, LINKAGES has developed partnerships with approximately 45 rehabilitation agencies and over 160 employers.

About Chief People Officer, LLC

Chief People Officer is a strategic execution and business process automation company that uses technology to provide a revolutionary level of transparency, accountability, and configurability to help organizations achieve their strategic goals by automating best practice processes. Manage the ENTIRE employee life-cycle with ONE simple web tool. From a potential employee’s initial interest to their last day of employment and everything in-between, Chief People Officer’s People Assistant provides an an-easy-to-use software platform that is configurable “on the fly”, not just a portal for hiring or benefits. All people's processes can be automated. A company’s greatest assets are its employees. The environment for their success is provided by the Chief People Officer, which specializes in HR Information Systems, Strategic Planning, Performance & Accountability, Talent Management and consulting.