Episode 77: Svetlana Kouznetsova

Introducing Svetlana Kouznetsova

Svetlana Kouznetsova is a user experience and accessibility consultant who is deaf and works with businesses to make their products, services, events user-friendly and accessible to more people. She is a book author and an international speaker.

Show Notes

Twitter | @svknyc

Website | About Me

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 77.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today we’re joined by Svetlana Kouznetsova. Svetlana is a user experience and accessibility consultant who is deaf and works with businesses to make their products, services, events user-friendly and accessible to more people. She is a book author and an international speaker.

A special note about this week’s podcast: Since Svetlana is deaf, we conducted this interview by typing back and forth with each other. We recorded this audio after the actual interview and asked Janet Oak to join us to read Svetlana’s part of the conversation, for the benefit of our podcast listening audience.

Tara: Welcome Svetlana!

Svetlana: Hello! Thanks for having me.

Liam: Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us more about yourself?

Svetlana: I live in NYC area. Originally I’m from Russia and my first language is Russian

Liam: Cool!

Svetlana: If you wondered why my name looks and sounds foreign, that’s why. I mastered English as a foreign language after moving here to the States.

Tara: Is sign language the same in Russian and in English? Or is that a silly question?!

Svetlana: No. Sign languages are different all over. Even British and American sign languages are totally different. Sign languages are in the same way spoken languages are different. There’s no universal sign language in the same way there’s no universal spoken language.

Svetlana: Currently I’m an user experience and accessibility consultant helping businesses make their products, services environment user-friendly and accessible. I provide consulting services, Training sessions, workshops. Sometimes I give presentations at events and conferences. One example is a TEDx talk I gave this year about captioning access. I also wrote a book on this topic.

Liam: I love it!

Tara: I watched that TedX. It was very interesting. Can you tell how got started with website specific work?

Svetlana: My first degree is in graphic design. My masters degree is in Internet Technology. I did not have any plans, I didn’t know what I wanted to do … many 18 year olds don’t! So I just went with the flow.

Tara: Was that in the US or was that still in Russia?

Svetlana: I went to American universities. And graduated from universities here.

Tara: Ah! Were they specific universities for the deaf, like Gallaudet?

Svetlana: No, I went to a regular university. Where I had sign language interpreters and live captioners. I learned English 7 years before I learned American sign language. I could not understand interpreters so I benefited from captions more. Majority of deaf and hard of hearing people use spoken languages and don’t know sign language. American sign language is my fifth language that I learned, by the way.

Tara: Wow!

Liam: Wow! That is really cool!

Tara: So, tell us about what it was like going to university in the US with a new language and also being deaf?

Svetlana: It was very overwhelming with new language and new culture. But I was even more overwhelmed when I couldn’t understand deaf people or sign languag...