Long ago, while working on the Hueyify project with my son Huey — may his gentle soul rest in peace — he envisioned extending our technology into digital media. This was well before AI, image classification, and segmentation became mainstream. Huey believed digital media could serve a greater purpose: offering deeper context for individuals with vision impairments, enabling them to experience stories and images in a more meaningful way.
After Huey's passing, I initially found it difficult to continue Hueyify and decided to pause that project. Later, I founded snapWONDERS, shifting focus from Hueyify to address concerns around metadata, privacy, and accessibility in digital media. This shift was driven by a desire to respect user privacy and to find a new way to realise Huey's vision — aligned with these core values.
He envisioned embedding stories within media so that those with vision impairments could gather personal context, deeper meaning, shared feelings, and memories that might otherwise be inaccessible.
Despite my reservations — due to the complexities involved — Huey's ideas remained visionary. His passion was rooted in the belief that stories should be accessible only to their intended recipients: concealed from others, enriching the connection between media and its viewers.
His vision was deeply specific: a person who is blind should be able to receive a photo from a family member and experience more than just the image itself — the story behind it, the memory, the feeling the sender wanted to share — all concealed within the media, unlocked only for them. Not accessibility as a feature checkbox, but as the reason the product exists.
Over time, I often wondered why we couldn't bring his idea to life. Huey was quite assertive that it all made sense — and he was excited to see it happen. Today, I realise part of his confidence was because he never doubted I could make it happen. In fact, he believed I was the one to do it.
This exploration led to the development of Vaultify, a new offering within the snapWONDERS ecosystem — a meaningful pivot from Hueyify that embodies Huey's visionary spirit. Vaultify leverages AI to seamlessly embed meaningful story payloads into media, with the personal content concealed for the intended audience and undetectable to the human eye. This innovation unlocks hidden narratives within images, providing a richer, more connected experience — especially for users with visual impairments.
I'm pleased to share that the core concept of Vaultify is already proving effective. With AI, this is no longer a distant ambition — AI can facilitate the entire process, from understanding the context of the media, to intelligently embedding the payload, to surfacing the right story for the right person. What once felt too complex to realise is now within reach. Our next step is refining features dedicated to accessibility — integrating it deeply into the technology rather than treating it as an afterthought. Accessibility, for us, is not a separate layer — the story, the context, the memory is embedded directly inside the visual media itself, concealed within the image or video, invisible to the eye but unlockable by the intended recipient.
This journey has been both challenging and profoundly rewarding. It's a testament to Huey's enduring legacy and my dedication to pushing the boundaries of what's possible. I am excited to share this new chapter and the positive impact Vaultify will bring.
