About Sveta

Audio Accessibility was founded by Svetlana Kouznetsova, or Sveta for short. She is an accessibility strategy consultant helping businesses increase sales and make their mainstream web, media, and events more user-friendly and accessible to the world’s largest and the most ignored minority of 1.85 billion disabled people. She works with corporations, media producers, business owners, event organizers, and educational institutions.

Sveta also provides consultation and training to businesses on improving and expanding the quality and impact of their audio, video, and event communication to 466 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the  world.

Her TEDx Talk uncovers benefits of captioning access that increase audience and ROI for businesses.

Why consulting services?

Sveta launched consulting services because she has firsthand experience with deafness and wanted to increase awareness about abilities and needs for communication and information access to people like herself. She was born with good hearing and became profoundly deaf in both ears at the age of two due to meningitis.

In addition to this, Sveta has over 20 years of professional experience and expertise in design, technology, and accessibility.  She knows many deaf and hard of hearing people from different walks of life and has been involved with many events and workshops on deafness related topics to be able to advise to businesses and individuals not familiar about accessibility for people with deafness and hearing loss.

She has also met numerous hearing people who tell her how much they benefit from captions when learning foreign languages, when watching TVin a bar or gym, or when listening to a speaker that is hard to understand. Captioning is an important part of multimodal learning and a key to improving literacy.

Captioning access is one of Sveta’s several specializations. She did not have access on TV until she was about 15 years old when her father brought home a captioning decoder. Her family was so amazed with this magic box that made captions show up on almost TV channels! Captions not only have helped her as a deaf person, but also as a native Russian speaker learning English after moving to the USA.

Since then Svetlana cannot imagine her life without captioning access. She has done a lot of research, written a book, and given consulting and presentations on this topic.

How does Sveta communicate with people?

Sveta is bilingual in Russian and English, fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and knows basic Russian Sign Language (RSL) and French. She uses voice/speechreading, writing/typing, and/or sign language to communicate with people depending on the situation and whom she is talking with.

Since Sveta became the only deaf member in her family, she has relearned to speak and lipread in Russian and later learned English.  Sveta has also learned a bit of other languages. She took French as a foreign language in school, German in university, and learned some other languages on her own.

Although Sveta cannot understand everything and everyone by lipreading, it is easier for her to understand certain people if they face her, speak clearly, and don’t talk too fast. If she does not understand people by lipreading, she asks them to write down or sign what they say.

Sign language makes it much easier and faster for her to communicate with people in person, even if someone has a basic knowledge of sign language. It facilitates lipreading. She is better at conversing one to one than in groups where people would take turns summarizing to her what’s being said (by respeaking or writing or signing).

Sveta is also familiar (though not fluent) with Cued Speech. She finds it very beneficial to know how to pronounce words correctly and to be aware of others’ speech styles (including foreign accents).

A former hearing aid user, Sveta now hears with a cochlear implant from Advanced Bionics which she loves. Sveta has limited benefits from the implant. Due to the long duration of her deafness and almost no auditory memory prior to receiving the implant at the age of 20, she is not able to discriminate speech without lipreading or relying on other visual means.

At public events Sveta uses live captioners and/or sign language interpreters to get full access to aural information. She has worked with many interpreters, captioners, and various communication access providers globally for over 25 years.

As a result of her experience and expertise with various types of access, Sveta has been advising event organizers and media producers for over 10 years on optimal communication access.