Svetlana Kouznetsova

Personal Details

Bio

Svetlana Kouznetsova is an independent B2B accessibility strategist and trailblazer. Sveta has worked with businesses for over 10 years to make their web, media, and events usable and accessible to the world's largest minority of 1.85 billion of disabled people. She has an MS degree in Internet Technology and over 20 years of professional experience in design, tech, and accessibility.

Sveta is also a founder of Audio Accessibility and provides consultation and training to businesses about quality captioning and communication access to audio, video, events to 466 million of deaf and hard of hearing people worldwide. She is an international speaker and a book author. Sveta's TEDx talk uncovers benefits of captioning access that increase audience and ROI for businesses.

Her personal experience with deafness and communication barriers contributes to her success as a professional consultant and allows clients to have a greater understanding of why accessibility is critical.

Current position (1)

B2B Accessibility Consultant, Author, Speaker

Svetlana Kouznetsova Consulting & Audio Accessibility

Degrees (1)

MS in Internet Technology

Pace University

2003 to 2005

Presentations

Presentations (9)

Mobile Accessibility: Past, Present, Future!

Technology changes faster than accessibility guidelines can catch up, so the guidelines had to be updated several times. Sveta will discuss history of web accessibility to help you better understand how it started and evolved over years and why it’s important to go above and beyond the guidelines. She will explain how disabled people use mobile devices and show some accessibility examples. The speaker will also share her personal experience as a deaf professional and a mobile user. Mobile accessibility improves user experience for everyone!

Accessibility in UX

People with disabilities make up the largest minority that is 20% of global population, but their needs are sadly the most misunderstood and ignored. Just like user experience, accessibility needs to be baked into any process and is not to be used as an afterthought.

Individuals with disabilities need to be considered in user research in order to improve user experience for more people. Accessibility benefits everyone and not just those with disabilities – including businesses who can improve their bottom lines. Sveta will share her personal experience as a deaf UX practitioner and discuss what needs to be done to make products and services accessible.

Accessibility: Coding and Beyond

Accessibility is for everyone and is a responsibility of all team members. While a lot of web accessibility guidelines are focused on coding, there are other accessibility components that all team members need to consider in order to improve the overall product or service from the beginning of any projects. Sveta will share her personal experience as a deaf person and some examples of accessibility issues and solutions. They may be new to some and sound like common sense to others, but sadly there are many products and services that fail at accessibility. The talk will help developers and their team members better understand why accessibility is not just about coding and why it's not to be used as an afterthought.

How Captions Increase ROI and Audience for Media Creators

TEDx Talk: https://youtu.be/ngKp9MqUGj8

Accessibility Through The Eyes of a Deaf Professional

Deaf-Friendly WordPress: Beyond Video Captioning and Sign Language

Communication Access in Higher Education: How Serving Deaf People Benefits Everyone

Quality Same-Language Captioning: Bringing Access to Both Deaf People and Foreigners

Many more presentations

Check out my past speaking experience on https://svknyc.com/speaking

Reviews

Testimonials (3)

Our work with Sveta helped us understand better how we as an organization can make our events more accessible. As challenging as it seemed in the beginning, it turned out it doesn't take much to create a more friendly and accessible environment for speakers with disabilities. I would definitely recommend Sveta to anyone who wants to make their event more welcoming.
Vilyana L.
Verified
We had Svetlana over for our conference and we were very happy that she joined us. Our audience was captured by her enthusiasm during her talk on accessibility. It was a unique talk that we can definitely recommend to plan in other conferences as well.
Gill C.
Verified
We hosted Sveta as a speaker for World Information Architecture Day 2019, NYC, and it was a pleasure. Sveta is so well versed in the whole speaker process; she always handed me any materials or information I needed well before the deadline. As a first time organizer, it was great to have someone who really knows what is what. She is incredibly knowledgeable and up to date with accessibility laws and regulations, tips and helpful hints. She is very professional through email, and quick with the response time, and delightful in person. Many people raved about her presentation after, saying they had learned so much, and they were so glad they attended.
Emily L.
Verified

Svetlana Kouznetsova

Personal Details

Presentations

Books & Articles (6)

Expertise (16)

Reviews