About Audio Accessibility

Professional Expertise. Lived Experience. A Broader Understanding of Deafness.

I’m Svetlana (Sveta) Kouznetsova, the founder of Audio Accessibility and an independent B2B accessibility strategy consultant, published author, and international speaker. I’m based in New York City area.

I advise leadership and multidisciplinary teams at businesses and companies on deaf awareness, communication access, and captioning best practices. My work focuses on identifying and addressing gaps between the accessibility companies believe they are providing and the real-world experiences of customers with hearing disabilities.

I bring together more than 25 years of professional experience in design, technology, and accessibility with a lifetime of firsthand experience navigating communication and information access as a profoundly deaf person.

Why I Created Audio Accessibility

I became profoundly deaf in both ears at the age of two after meningitis. Since then, I have experienced many different approaches to deafness, communication, education, hearing technology, and accessibility.

My professional career began in design and technology. In 2007, while working as a web designer, I learned about digital accessibility — a turning point that eventually led me into accessibility consulting. That same year, I attended my hearing sister’s graduation ceremony and experienced live captioning at a mainstream event. It made me realize that communication access should not be limited primarily to deaf events.

As my work in accessibility grew, I noticed significant gaps in understanding deafness and communication access — even within accessibility spaces. Too often, deaf accessibility is reduced to a few familiar solutions, such as captions or sign language interpreters.

But deaf people are not a homogeneous group. We have different levels of hearing, communication preferences, experiences, and access needs. That realization became an important reason for creating Audio Accessibility.

Deafness Is a Spectrum

My understanding of deafness has been shaped by both my own experiences and those of many other deaf and hard-of-hearing people I have encountered throughout my life.

I’m bilingual in Russian and English. Russian is my first language and English is my third, and I also know basic French. I have always loved foreign languages and have studied several spoken and written languages, including German, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, and others. Being profoundly deaf has never diminished my interest in languages or my ability to learn them.

My experience with sign languages developed differently. I learned American Sign Language (ASL) later in life through immersion and interaction with deaf people and became fluent. I also have some knowledge of Russian Sign Language (RSL).

I grew up oral as the only deaf person in my family, relearning to speak and lipread in Russian after becoming deaf. I have spent most of my life in the hearing world, and most of my education was in mainstream schools. Depending on the situation, I may communicate through speech and lipreading, writing or typing, sign language, captions, or a combination of these methods.

I am also familiar with Cued Speech and have experience with hearing aids and a cochlear implant. I received my cochlear implant at age 20. While it gives me useful access to sound, I still rely heavily on visual information for communication.

Through schools, universities, deaf communities, events, workshops, and professional settings, I have met people with hearing disabilities with widely different hearing levels, backgrounds, communication preferences, experiences, and access needs. I have also worked with live captioners, sign language interpreters, and other communication access providers in many settings around the world.

These experiences have reinforced something central to my work: deafness is a spectrum. There is no single communication method, technology, or accommodation that works for every deaf or hard of hearing person.

Being deaf gives me firsthand knowledge of communication barriers, but being deaf alone did not make me an accessibility expert. My professional expertise comes from more than 25 years of work and study in design, technology, and accessibility, including a Master of Science in Internet Technology. Together, my professional expertise, lived experience, and interactions with people across the spectrum of deafness shape the way I approach my work.

Captions Transformed My Life

Captioning is one of my professional specialties — and its importance is deeply personal to me.

I did not have access to captions on television until I was about 15 years old, when my father brought home a closed captioning decoder. My family and I were amazed by this little box that suddenly made television much more accessible.

Captions benefited not only me as a deaf person, but my hearing family as well. They became especially valuable after I moved to the United States because they allowed me to see unfamiliar English words while watching television as I learned English as my third language.

My experiences — and those of many hearing people I have met — have shown me that captions can benefit people for many reasons, including learning languages, understanding unfamiliar accents or difficult speakers, and accessing content in noisy or sound-sensitive environments.

I eventually researched captioning extensively and wrote Sound Is Not Enough: Captioning as Universal Design, first published in 2014 with a second edition published in 2022. My TEDx talk, How Captions Increase ROI and Audience for Media Creators, explores the audience and business benefits of high-quality captioning.

Let’s Think Outside The Ears!

My work broadens the way companies think about deaf accessibility — beyond assumptions, one-size-fits-all solutions, and compliance checkboxes — so they can create more effective communication experiences for customers with hearing disabilities.

If your business wants to work with me, explore my services and contact me to discuss your needs.