Svetlana Kouznetsova (Sveta) is an independent B2B consultant and accessibility trailblazer based in NYC area. Sveta helps businesses make their mainstream web, media, and events more accessible to the world's largest minority of 1.85 billion disabled people.

She is also the founder of Audio Accessibility and provides consultation on improving communication and information access to 466 million of deaf and hard of hearing people worldwide.

Sveta is a book author and an international speaker. Her book and TEDx talk uncover the benefits of high quality captioning access that increase audience and ROI for businesses.

She has an MS degree in Internet Technology and over 20 years of experience in design, technology, and accessibility.

Despite being deaf, Sveta didn’t think much about accessibility until 2007. Many things happened that year.

First, Sveta was working as a web designer at that time, and to improve her coding skills, she researched semantic code, which directly led to her interest in web accessibility. This became the start of her journey as a consultant to businesses on making their web accessible.

Second, Sveta attended her hearing sister's college graduation, which was live captioned for everyone. She had an epiphany as she realized that live captions need not be limited only to events for deaf people. Sveta started researching this topic and providing consulting services to mainstream media and event producers on optimal captioning access.

Third, Sveta attended her first public event as the only deaf person. She shared her personal story with event organizers. They liked her story so much that they invited her to give a presentation at their event the following year. Since then she has been a professional speaker giving presentations at many events locally, nationally, and internationally.

Svetlana brings a unique combination of lived experience with deafness and professional expertise in accessibility, giving people valuable insight into the importance of accessibility. Over time, it’s been great to see increased interest from organizations in accessibility for their products, services, and venues. While they often don’t know the best way to proceed, advising them on how to provide optimal accessible solutions to a larger audience is very rewarding for Sveta, and everyone wins.

Svetlana’s work: https://about.me/svetlanakouznetsova

Svetlana's TEDx talk: https://youtu.be/ngKp9MqUGj8

Svetlana's book: https://audio-accessibility.com/book/