The Invisible Revolution: How Code-Based Graphics Are Changing the Internet

Accessibility and sustainability collide in this eye-opening conversation with Heather Neff, CEO of Equivalent. She returns to AXSChat to share groundbreaking developments in their mission to transform static graphics into responsive, accessible code.

What if every image online could instantly adapt to your device settings, work seamlessly with screen readers, and consume a fraction of the energy? That's exactly what Equivalent is achieving through their revolutionary approach to Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs). Unlike traditional pixel-based images that remain fixed and deteriorate when enlarged, these "smart SVGs" behave more like webpages - responding to dark mode, custom color settings, and accessibility preferences without requiring additional effort from users or developers.

The implications are profound. With AI systems generating 34 million images daily and users uploading 64,000 images every second, we're facing an unprecedented accessibility crisis. Equivalent's technology addresses this by dramatically reducing file sizes (from megabytes to kilobytes) while ensuring graphics can be navigated by screen readers with custom reading orders. The sustainability benefits are equally impressive - their dark mode implementation alone can reduce energy consumption by 28% and extend mobile battery life by up to 63% on OLED displays.

The small startup is now preparing to launch an API that will allow enterprises to batch-convert thousands of images, ensuring both brand consistency and accessibility compliance without requiring specialized knowledge from design or engineering teams. Their vision extends to a future where all imagery becomes code-based, delivering a web experience that's simultaneously more inclusive, more performant, and more environmentally responsible.

Are you interested in helping shape this revolution in web graphics? Equivalent is currently seeking beta testers for their API and connecting with angel investors who share their passion for accessibility and sustainability. Visit their website to try their current tools with a free two-week trial and witness firsthand how smart SVGs are poised to transform our digital experience.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Equivalent and Heather Ness
• 1:22 The Magic of Scalable Vector Graphics
• 4:43 WordPress Integration and CMS Solutions
• 6:35 AI and Image Accessibility Crisis
• 9:05 Figma Integration and Design Tools
• 13:38 Sustainability and Energy Savings
• 17:19 Enterprise Solutions and Implementation
• 21:31 Current Status and Call for Support
• 25:49 Closing Remarks

Transcript

Neil Milliken: 0:00

Hello and welcome to AXSChat. We're delighted to have a returning guest today. We've got Heather Neff, CEO of Equivalent. We've had numerous conversations with Heather in the past. I'm a big fan of the work that Heather and Paul and the Equivalent team have done on smart SVGs and the technology that they've developed and continue to develop. It's because of that continued development we thought it'd be really great to have you back on, heather. So for those that haven't listened to us interviewing you previously or haven't heard me waxing lyrical about the work you do, please can you give us a bit of an introduction and tell us a little bit more about Equivalent.

Heather Neff: 0:42

Sure, thank you. My name is Heather Ness and I am the co-founder. And more about Equivalent Sure, thank you. My name is Heather Neff and I am the co-founder and CEO of Equivalent, and we are a startup that's focusing on turning graphics into accessible code, which means they can be personalized instantly to all of your devices and user settings, and it's a really exciting time to revolutionize what's happening in the design software world, where we're actually going to be disrupting the market and creating a new market for stuff that's going to be shifting left and making everything inherently accessible from the beginning.

Neil Milliken: 1:12

Yeah, and that sounds incredible. But how are you doing this? What are the sort of magic pixies that are making all of these things happen?

Heather Neff: 1:21

Well, it's actually software. So what we're working on is something called a scalable vector graphic. It's a format that's been around for about 20 years. It's acceptable on all major browsers and mobile devices. Most enterprise and other companies use SVGs as they can be very small if you know how to optimize your work.

Heather Neff: 1:40

A lot of people don't realize the power behind the SVG. Most people still are familiar with pixel-based images like JPEGs and PNGs, but those are very static, they don't respond to anything, they don't do anything and in fact, they actually are quite bad at being enlarged or zoomed in on for low vision users, who maybe magnify their content. So what we're doing is we're taking the code that's being generated behind what's called a vector-based image, which is a code-based image. Say, if you're designing an illustrator at Figma, it's a default of vector format, which means, as you design a logo or an illustration, it's on a math-based grid and that means that the browser can redraw that instantly. You don't see it actually draw it, it just displays it and you can resize it infinitely. So therefore it's called a scalable vector graphic, which means you have no resolution attached to this math-based art and as it's designing these coordinates, it's creating code and it's very much like HTML.

Heather Neff: 2:35

It's called XML and what we're doing is we're taking that code, we're cleaning it up, we're optimizing it, we're making it accessible to screen readers, we're adding some special IP that allows it to change to user selected colors which has never been done before and we're doing a lot of other things that are so advanced that we're making images that act like a webpage, which is actually very great for speed and also for screen reader users who are navigating around inside an image and listening to custom reading orders and all kinds of advanced tools. So we're making the most advanced graphics, at the same time making sure they respond to dark mode, which is a huge energy savings play as well. So we're making the world's most inclusive and sustainable graphic files.

Neil Milliken: 3:15

As I said, big fan. I know Antonio had a comment.

Antonio Santos: 3:19

Most of the web. An important percentage of the web runs on WordPress, so if someone is running a website on that platform, what positive implications this can bring to them.

Heather Neff: 3:32

That's a great question. So we're working on making sure that our API that we're launching in a few months is going to be able to hook up to any content management system like Squarespace, wix or WordPress. You're specifically talking about something like WordPress. Svgs right now need a special plugin, and it's because they can have some issues around the code in the backend. What we're doing is detecting for malicious code and making sure that the SVGs that are produced will be able to be used within these projects. They're put in line so the entire piece of code is embedded together and it doesn't need any JavaScript or anything else to make it work. So it's a very self-contained piece of smart technology that listens to the OS level of the browser and at this rate, with the API that we're working on, you could batch your entire library into these smart graphics that respond to light mode and dark mode to create a dark mode experience very quickly in these environments like WordPress.

Antonio Santos: 4:28

There are different reports that we have read over the years that we are creating more and more content on the web every year and that does not correspond to the web being more accessible, and one of the elements that's very important for that are images. So what impact do you expect in the next three, four or five years that can positively impact these type of reports?

Heather Neff: 4:52

Again, very great insight about how images themselves are so important on a web page, and there's trillions of images online and most of them are inaccessible.

Heather Neff: 5:04

We're working on a tool that actually would, at the browser level and using some AI powered stuff, to come through and find every single image and convert it to this amazing, lightning fast, accessible code and put it right back in.

Heather Neff: 5:17

So what we're really dreaming about is a way to fix the accessibility for all imagery online and also speed up the internet and add all its efficiency gains to everything, so delivery times and low bandwidth issues would be solved, as well as offering and easily offering a more dark theme environment, which is an accessibility setting for people like myself that have light sensitivity. And at this rate that is happening, where generative AIs are making 34 million images every day, there's 64,000 images uploaded every second to the internet, and none of them are inherently accessible. It is becoming, especially with Gen AI, a massive problem that's going to get way out of hand, and we hope to attach our API to every single place that images are being generated both content management systems, but also design software and also generative AI places that are just cranking out these huge images that are usually over one megabyte and we're trying to get all of our files under 10 kilobytes. In fact, we've been able to get like an icon down to less than half a kilobyte.

Debra Ruh: 6:20

So we have some really, really strong goals of reducing the amount of sheer weight that the images hold on the Internet and making them lightning fast and accessible at the same time, heather, I was just going to ask you a question about the AI and then you just jumped right into it and I'm just I'm a little stunned by it, and I've been always going to ask you a question about how you implement it. You went into that. It sounds like you've really, really thought of a lot of these big questions. It sounds amazing, and I know that Neil has a question about design, so I'm going to shift it to him, but I just want to say that what I hope doesn't happen.

Debra Ruh: 6:55

I do hope that, since you're creating this, which it just makes these pictures so much more accessible to all of us and gives us so much better content, works better on the internet. It's smaller. How do we make sure that everybody adopts? It is a question that I want you to address, but maybe that's a little out of order with the design question. So just you know, I don't know if it makes sense. Neil, if you want to come in here or let Heather.

Neil Milliken: 7:22

Let's let Heather answer your question.

Debra Ruh: 7:24

All of these big problems she's gonna solve for us.

Heather Neff: 7:27

Thank you, heather yeah, we do have a tool that's free for people to use as well. We're always going to have a forever free type of version to play around and create these imagery. You do have to be a little bit of advanced to know how to like work with code a bit and understand what css is and have a dark theme on your website. So it's not for the real novices, but it is for people that have some development experience that understand that we're doing all the hard work for you. One of the things about adoption is that it is so brand new that we want to integrate directly into Figma and Adobe and where all the major design teams are working, so that they have an easier time putting it right into their workflow, so that we can get massive adoption at scale. We're working on a plugin right now that would be free for Figma, where they would have an introduction to the tool and be able to see all of the different features and try it out and see if they can get that working. And we do have, you know, a plan to then have these abilities to batch your entire library or sections at a time.

Heather Neff: 8:26

And we're really excited about working on some branding tools to help brands. The ultimate goal of what we're building right now is to make sure that every image that leads like an enterprise level site would be not only legally compliant but really made for more than just a legal compliance. The user experience right, you know, really made for more than just a legal compliance the user experience right Making sure that everything you send out is not going to be in violation of the law, but also make sure it's on brand and have brand guardrails around your colors and the contrast that you're allowed to use, and check all of that in real time to make sure that nothing escapes your doors that is not going to be on brand or legally compliant. And that's another big goal that we're working on.

Neil Milliken: 9:04

It's super exciting stuff.

Neil Milliken: 9:05

I know a couple of weeks back we had, uh, gina babalka on from forrester at the, the analyst house, and she was saying how she would you know we were talking about whether some businesses and communities were advancing on accessibility or whether we were just going round and round the same wheel, and she said that she was enthused about the design community and the adoption and the design community, and this was about, I think, a week before the big Figma event, and so I know you've also been, as you said, building plugins for Figma.

Neil Milliken: 9:42

But at that Figma event they launched a product called sites, which was essentially pushing out inaccessible websites right and, and so there was a big backlash on this against figma, and figma actually were actually forced to respond because the community backlash was so strong. But what this really demonstrates a power of community, but b also the importance of tools like Figma that are at the very left point of the design and production process to making our web experience accessible for the millions of people that experience websites around the world. And if they're going to make shortcuts and automate this stuff, it's even more important that tools like yours are part of that process yeah, we're very excited to you know.

Heather Neff: 10:35

I mean I've been watching. I was one of those ones that went immediately online and complained on. Complained that you can't launch sites. They're inaccessible. That's not how we do it and they're very. They do have a an accessibility forward thinking as well. They are trying, trying. I want to give oh, no, I understand.

Debra Ruh: 10:52

Yeah.

Neil Milliken: 10:53

But it was like a disconnect within their own organization that made this happen.

Heather Neff: 10:57

Yeah, I think it's the and people get so wrapped up into the power of AI and doing things fast, and that's not always the best way to do it, because you break things and sometimes that's a really bad idea. So, when it comes down to slowing down and getting things right, what we've been working on is a lot of research and development so that when we integrate with these places, we're doing all the heavy lifting for the co-generation and also helping the designers in real time so that they don't make inaccessible choices and we give them we're working on it, you know make sure that they see issues in real time and then help them with, like, alt text suggestions to give them a place to start editing and make sure that they can also market decorative. There's one thing that a lot of people don't realize is that many of the tools that help designers with accessibility don't actually encourage them to choose. Yes, use an alt text or market decorative so that it doesn't, you know, is not announced to a screen reader, which means there's not enough information there that's worthy of description, and we make our users choose and learn that they have to know what is the contextual description that you're going to write, or is this actually not really that important enough to have a description? And we make them do that distinction, and that's what really I'm really proud of about our software, plus the fact that we've made the software completely accessible itself and then the product it produces is completely accessible.

Heather Neff: 12:13

So our core mission is to not only help specifically low vision and blind users with graphics, it's to make sure that everything we do is going to be both sustainable and completely inclusive. And it's just like a huge mission to make sure that what we're doing is going to work with all of the other places that are out there, all of the design software and every different type of version, to make sure that we can be kind of a tack-on to every export so that we're in line to help everyone in every library of every design software that's out there. Debra, you're muted.

Neil Milliken: 12:43

Debra, you're muted.

Debra Ruh: 12:45

Y'all can't hear me. Anyway, I'm sorry. Before we went on air, you had mentioned something that I just thought made it all even a little bit more cooler, because I'm very impressed with what you're doing. You started talking about and you made me think about sustainability, and you had mentioned something you were working with Atos about to make sure that you were bringing down the amount of the energy, and I know that's something that people are really concerned about as well, so I was wondering if maybe you'd talk about that one.

Heather Neff: 13:11

It's a huge passion of mine because, without realizing it, my co-founder and husband had started really cleaning up the files and the artwork to make them incredibly small, like one kilobyte and working. The last time I was on the AXIS chat it was with Neil, and Neil and I had this conversation about how Atos had done a study around how both SVG was the smallest file format, which is, of course, energy, and delivery times and other reasons to have small files. A report that they had done with a third-party company was to prove how much energy savings was with dark mode alone. Dark mode saves, on average, 28% energy consumption and up to 63% of an OLED mobile battery life, which is a lot of energy.

Heather Neff: 13:56

Really passionate about clean code and making things small, this turned into a new way of thinking about how can we possibly make the most energy efficient internet as well, because right now, as you know, it's a massive polluter.

Heather Neff: 14:18

It eats up a ton of energy and every day it gets worse, and with the rise of AI, we are trying to counteract what's happening with that by basically trying to make tools that will streamline images into these tiny files, and even photographs have the potential to go from a single pixel to a vector point, and I believe that the future of all images is going to be code-based, and that's where I think it's going to be a very exciting field to watch is to get rid of pixels in many ways If we can make them no resolution at all, make them math-based, but also again accessible to screen readers. One of the things we're doing is adding special code to make sure they work with all screen readers and all mobile devices and all browsers, so that it's accessible for low vision and blind people. Especially our IP that allows it to change colors is really important for the low vision community that use special settings, and that's something we also embed into every image.

Neil Milliken: 15:11

We had this conversation. We had some very long conversations I think we overshot our meeting times significantly every time, um, but because we're both passionate about the topic and the the potential for this, and so we um, we commissioned some work from equivalentivalent, based upon the work that they'd been doing and talking about the work that we'd been doing Because, you know, I talk about treating exclusion like pollution. We got Equivalent to do a couple of projects for us. One was for the Olympics, so we got Equivalent to redo our Olympic timeline graphics for all oflympics. So we got the equivalent to do all that redo our olympic timeline graphics for all of the olympics that we'd supported, and redid all of the olympic uh logos as as smart svgs. And then the other one was we actually did the the smart svg about treating exclusion like pollution and made that a smart graphic as well.

Neil Milliken: 16:09

So that was a, you know, a sort of like. Not only was it a proof of the concept working, but it was also talking about it in the actual graphic, and so that was a fun project, I think, for for all of us, and so we were able to show what we were trying to do around both accessibility and sustainability, and it was also, I think, a good opportunity for a shop window for for the capabilities of of what equivalent we're doing, which is really quite unique stuff yeah, I think the future of what we're working on and what we did r&d that we did with attos was really exciting, because we're building images that will eventually be just like a web page in many ways.

Heather Neff: 16:50

They're going to have live, selectable, indexable text. It's all something that can have keywords behind the image. I mean, there is such a huge potential for these things. They rearrange themselves on mobile so you never have to pinch and zoom. It's a better user experience for everyone.

Heather Neff: 17:05

It doesn't matter if you have a disability. It's just that we're serving up a custom, personalized image to your device, and what we use is something called a browser media query. It pings you instantly and says, hey, are you on a desktop, are you on a mobile device? Are you in light mode, are you in dark mode? Are you using custom colors? What are your settings? And then we serve up instantly an image that works with that environment for you.

Heather Neff: 17:28

And that's why we call them smart is they're literally intelligent enough to know what your device is asking for, and so you don't have to do anything and it's free for you, and you don't even notice that there's anything happening. You just get an amazing user experience, and graphics are so integral to brand and especially things like infographics that contain a lot of very important information. We're trying to make the most accessible infographics by having live text that you can actually go and navigate around inside of it. I'm excited that, yes, with some AI, we could translate all of that into any language, which is really exciting as well. So the possibilities of having a much more accessible infographic, for example, is an exciting prospect for the future for everyone.

Antonio Santos: 18:09

So, Heather, we talked about the web and making the web more accessible to everyone. But there's another element of the day-to-day life of people who work in organisations. What positive implications does this have, and how can this be implemented within organisations? For example, when we work behind a corporate firewall. It could or the intranet any other applications that they use internally for employees to access.

Heather Neff: 18:35

That's an interesting insight question as well. I mean, we're trying to make it so that enterprises can put this into their entire workflows. That would then affect their apps or any other computer devices that are loading anything that have to do with imagery, right? So any interface, any software, any mobile device, anything that has an interface that has any buttons, even three-dimensional devices, should be able to use this technology, no problem. I think anything that's used in directionals and controls or anything that actually has an icon, is going to be able to use this technology, and that's going to be globally, and every monitor, every screen that you happen to see, anything where you have a visual, that's where it can be implemented.

Antonio Santos: 19:17

But can you give us kind of a more inside details? Let's say organization X how can they directly implement this on their internet, for example, what they need to do?

Heather Neff: 19:29

So we're coming out with. It's not ready yet, but we're working very hard on launching our very first API, which is again software. It's basically our software will talk to your software and integrate with your world and therefore you'll be able to batch. Let's say, you have a thousand icons for your massive enterprise company. You'll be able to lock in your colors and batch and create a thousand smart graphics very easily.

Heather Neff: 19:53

So we're working on a way for huge companies that have millions of images to go through and have a WCAG or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines audit to make sure that the color contrast is good, that there's an image description and that.

Heather Neff: 20:07

We're doing a lot of that checking for you and we're helping the designers fix those issues and flag them so that they know there's an issue, and then we're also converting them into this code behind the scenes so that the engineering team doesn't have to learn how to do all of the important screen reader location and what's called RAR accessible rich internet application. They don't need to learn a lot of that kind of special code that's used for screen readers, and so we're trying to ease the burden on enterprise teams to not have to learn all of the laws for the design and all of the code for the engineering, and that's why it's going to be something that is a tool that allows enterprise levels to create on-brand and accessible imagery from the very beginning, but also go back and fix all the images that they already have, and we realize that's a huge problem that they have had legacy things for many, many years. They have thousands of imagery and they need to batch that to make it into these tiny, lightweight, accessible files. Heather.

Debra Ruh: 21:02

Yes, I know we've been talking to you for a few years. You've been working on this, you and Paul and others on your team. I think I'm still a little confused. Where are you in that? Are you already working with brands? I mean, if somebody's like, okay, I agree, I love it. I don't think it's clear to me where you are. Is this products that are out? Where are you? How do we support what you're doing? Those kind of questions would be one thing that I.

Heather Neff: 21:29

So we are a small startup and we've been around. We're going into our fifth year, but we have right now some software on our website which is equivalent svgio. You can go over there and try it out. There's a two week free trial with no credit card. But what we're working on right now behind the scenes is getting ready to launch this next phase of having an API, which is a really big deal, so that you can actually have it in many different areas, not just on our own website, where you have to come over and do your work on our web server, so you can do it in many other locations.

Heather Neff: 21:59

We're working on that now. We don't have a release date yet, but we have the API ready to go. We're just doing a different interface and working on all kinds of features and upgrades and all kinds of cool new things to the tool. But there's so much on our backlog of items that we want to build. I can't over promise or tell you all the details, but it is very exciting.

Heather Neff: 22:20

What I would love to say to the audience today is we're looking for beta testers. We need people who can use an API, that know that that's something that they can use. We're trying to work towards a continual integration, continual delivery system, or CICD, and that's something where our ultimate goal is to become a CDN of imagery that will be delivering only accessible images and allowing people to feel legally protected within the company as well, making sure that there's these guardrails for the brand and all the imagery to make sure that those very important legal accessibility things are checked and also met before any image is allowed to go out. So it's also a complex thing about you know other formats, right, right, oh.

Debra Ruh: 23:00

I'm sorry. I thought I didn't realize you were making another comment, excuse me. No, no, no, no. So it sounds like, though, you're looking more than for beta testers. I mean, you're looking for funding, and aren't you looking for investor partners and groups to work with you? I mean, it sounds like the beta testers would be helpful, but you actually need something to afford.

Heather Neff: 23:22

Yeah, yeah, I mean the funding is something we are fundraising right now. We are a smaller startup. I think there's a total of nine employees. We have a great team around the world with some accessibility experts as well as people who are in business and different other arenas to help build the company. We are ready to scale.

Heather Neff: 23:38

We're looking for angel investors that might be really interested in what we're doing.

Heather Neff: 23:42

We have been bootstrapping the whole time and we're really in need of funding right now, so that would be definitely something that would be amazing.

Heather Neff: 23:50

We also have the ability to not only work with just angel investors, but, if there's somebody who actually has a fund that wants to get involved, we're looking for partners that are really passionate about helping people, helping the planet, that actually care about the mission that we're on, that actually care about the mission that we're on, which is to really disrupt the industry and make huge changes at a global scale that affects everyone, and that's something that, yeah, if you know anybody who's willing to reach out that has some money, it's been really difficult as a disabled female founder to raise in this market in the world and any connections that you guys might have, any network that you might know, or any investors that might be interested, we actually have something that's very scalable now and ready to monetize in quite a really exciting way, and we have a bunch of ai powered stuff happening with our api to produce the ability to take any image and put it through this process and convert them into these amazing smart graphics yeah, and whoever is the smart investor I'm sure is going to do very well out of it.

Neil Milliken: 24:50

Yeah, because I I think the attention to detail that you put into your product development and your processes and the thought behind it is, you know, second to none, and I think that it's something I've been really excited about. You know, I've done my best to try and champion the work that you're doing. So, um, I really believe. I really believe that it is a game-changing application of technology, right? So credit to you for all of that fantastic work. So, yes, if you're a techie and you're producing websites and you want to play around with some cutting-edge tech, sign up for Heather's beta testing. If you are an angel investor looking to do something in AI that is not a copycat of all of the other AI initiatives that are out there and actually has a purpose and an end result and some real potential to grow, engage with Heather. So thank you for coming back on and telling us about the work that you've been doing.

Neil Milliken: 25:48

We are coming towards the end of our allotted half hour. I need to thank those that support us the Amazon for keeping us on air, mycleartext for helping us with the captions. Also need to give a shout out to Jabra that have been kind enough to let us try out some of their cool kit, like their AI powered meeting room equipment and cameras and so on. So if I look a little bit more scary in the detail that you're seeing of me, or if I sound a little better, it's thanks to Jabra. So thank you, heather, it's been a real pleasure having you back on. We'll be talking anyway, but I'm really glad that we're giving our audience the opportunity to hear about the work. Thank you, heather. It's been a real pleasure having you back on. We'll be talking anyway, but I'm really glad that we're giving our audience the opportunity to hear about the work.

Heather Neff: 26:32

Thank you, guys. It was an honor to be here.