Harmony Clauer-Salyers
(CS, CE ’12), San Antonio
Developer of the USAA Bank Voice-Guided Deposit
A year before Harmony Clauer-Salyers graduated from Illinois Tech, she interned with USAA Bank and has remained with the company, working on development of the web, mobile devices, and accessibility. The bank serves current and former United States military members and their families.
“I noticed that we had an increasing number of wounded warriors returning from duty without their eyesight plus a membership base that is older, which made for a fairly large population of individuals unable to use the check deposit feature that so many of us take for granted,” says Clauer-Salyers, who spoke about her work during the College of Science Women in STEM Week 2016 event on Mies Campus.
Clauer-Salyers had an idea to create a voice-guided cross-platform tool that enables visually impaired clients to deposit checks on their own. As part of a USAA staff coding competition, she led a team that built the winning Deposit@Mobile prototype, which was further refined and is now part of USAA’s suite of banking apps.
“Mobile devices have really become an assistive technology,” she adds, noting that smart phones have now joined magnified screen readers and braille-imprinted keyboards as ways to improve the quality of life for the visually impaired.