Stuttering and Video Conferencing: Strategies and Best Practices

We had such a blast attending the National Stuttering Association’s annual conference in Florida earlier in July! It is always refreshing and inspiring to be surrounded by people who stutter for days, in which knowledge, stories, laughter, and tears are all shared dysfluently. 😀

Hosting our workshop, “Claim Your Virtual Presence”, was an extremely rewarding experience as well. Although it was my first time running a workshop at the NSA conference, and also the first workshop (as far as I know) co-hosted with a remote presenter, I am glad that everything worked out so well. According to our post-workshop survey:

• More than 80% of the respondents found the information shared at the workshop “very” or “extremely” informative;
•  ⅔ of the respondents felt it was “extremely easy” to participate in the workshop
• 100% of the respondents found themselves “very” or “extremely” likely to apply the strategies and recommendation we discussed in the workshop in their future video calls.

Our workshop was designed to be interactive and participatory. Our goals were to 

1. share our research findings on what made video conferencing hard or easy for people who stutter
2. collectively come up with videoconferencing strategies that could be adopted by people who stutter as well as their allies. 

To achieve the second goal, we designed two breakout sessions, during which we divided the participants into three groups of five to six people each, sharing and learning from each other, and collectively coming up with the top three ideas to share with the big group.

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Here we summarize the ideas collected from the stuttering community, both from this workshop and from other PWS who participated in our research elsewhere. A visual handout of these ideas and recommendations can be downloaded here.

Strategies for People who Stutter

• PRE-MEETING: Prepare yourself and have a good setup
  1. Prepare for the meeting: draft or check out the meeting agenda if you have time; familiarize yourself with the names of other meeting attendees if you don’t already know them; prepare yourself well with what you want to say; meditate before high-stress meetings
  2. Customize your technical setup: adjust the height and position of the desk/computer so that you have a good posture and your voice can be projected well; adjusting the height and position of the camera so that your face is centered and you can make effective eye contact; try using earphones to see whether that helps you speak more effectively; try turning off self-view as it can make a person more self conscious and distract you from your audience;
  3. Request for reasonable accommodations: e.g. extra speaking time, more comfortable speaking order (e.g. being the first during self-introduction), not being spotlit when speaking.
• DURING-MEETING: Embracing your identity and tap into your non-verbal communication skills
  1. Intentional self-disclosure: be ready to disclose one’s stutter early on, and in an unapologetic, informative way. Research has shown that informative and personalized self-disclosure benefits both the listener (Werle & Byrd 2022) and the speaker in their communication experience (Young et al 2022). 
  2. Non-verbal communications: leave the camera on; be more animated during the meeting, using your body language, facial expression, and eye contact; have a go-to strategy to indicate to others when you want to talk and when you are finished.  
• POST-MEETING: Recap and reflect
  1. Leverage asynchronized channels: follow up in emails or chat threads if you did not say everything you wanted to say during the meeting.
  2. Reflect on your meeting experience with self compassion: recognize your achievements, treat yourself as you’d treat a good friend.

Here is a handout that summaries these strategies (PDF):

Recommendations for Meeting Organizers and Attendees

Successful video conferencing is a collaboration among all meeting attendees. That means, while PWS can take up the above-mentioned strategies and adapt their behaviors for video conferences, it is as important for other people to accommodate and support each other in video calls.

During the workshop, we also worked out the following recommendations for video conference organizers and attendees. 

• For meeting organizers/facilitator: setup and run the meetings with inclusivity in mind.
  1. Use the video conferencing platforms that give participants more control over how they show up, e.g. allowing the user to turn off self-view, allowing the user to customize the layout of other participants .
  2. Proactively reach out to meeting participants for their needs and try to accommodate those needs, e.g. allocating more time for a person, setting up a specific speaker turn order, encouraging people to use the chat function.
  3. Setting clear expectations ahead of time for meeting format and attendee responsibilities so that the attendees are prepared for what/how they should contribute.
  4. Use a facilitator whenever possible.
  5. Start out the meeting with ground rules of how to engage in the meetings, e.g. mechanism for turn taking, whether the chat would be moderated. 
  6. Instead of popcorning (selecting people at random to speak when giving introductions or input), inform everyone what the order of speaking will be, so PWS have time to mentally prepare and aren’t caught off guard.

• For all the attendees: be patient and supportive when others are speaking.
  1. Mindful turn taking: speak one at a time and NOT talk over each other by leaving some time between speakers. In particular, do NOT interrupt PWS when they are speaking, they will let you know when they are done, if it is unclear, confirm with them that they are finished.
  2. Leverage the non-verbal channels: ask simple questions in chat, use emoji’s to communicate emotions when possible.
  3. Actively listen and actively respond: listen attentively to the speaker, focus on the content and ideas, engage and respond (verbally or nonverbally) to show understanding and interests.

Here is a handout that summaries these guidelines (PDF):

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What’s next

Building on our existing research and the collective wisdom from the workshop, AImpower will continue our quest for an inclusive video communication environment for all. To do so, we will:

1. Share the knowledge and raise the awareness: we created a handout that summarizes the challenges and strategies for PWS in video meetings, as well as recommendations for meeting organizers and attendees. Please help us share it widely with and beyond the stuttering community.
2. Re-envision video conferencing technologies: we are actively co-designing the video conferencing technologies with the stuttering community, to make it more stuttering friendly and more inclusive for everyone.
3. Advocate for culture changes: we will join other stuttering organizations and marginalized communities in the campaign for a more inclusive meeting culture and reasonable accommodations for speech diversity.

If you want to be part of the change, please:

1. Share this knowledge with your friends, family, colleagues, and employers to raise awareness: email them the handout, make a social media post that links to this post, have an open conversation with people!
2. Participate in our co-design workshops: we are running a series of co-design workshops for video conferencing technologies over the summer, if you stutter, please sign up here!
3. Apply what you learn from this post: if you are a PWS, apply the strategies for PWS we listed above and explore more strategies that might work best for you. Sign up for an interview with us in a few months to reflect on how those strategies work out for you. For everyone, please follow the recommendations for meeting organizers and attendees – together, we can create the change we want to see!

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Thank YOU

I am thankful for the NSA to provide the space that met all the requirements we asked for, and appreciate our participants for engaging in all the activities.

A big “thank you” goes to all the workshop participants: thank you for showing up, thank you for being fully present, thank you for your openness, honesty, and creativity. You are the greatest source of knowledge and the inspirations for all of our work!

I am also extremely thankful for all our donors – your generous gifts have enabled us to attend the conference and do everything we described here. Your support has really made a difference for the stuttering community, and beyond! Please continue supporting us as we kick off design and technical work to re-envision videoconferencing with the stuttering community: $200 can fund a co-design workshop that enable us to involve and center the perspectives of people who stutter in the design process!

Last but not least, the biggest kudo goes to my co-presenter, Gary Goldsmith, for spending hours and hours planning out the structure and every single detail of the workshop with me, and for being the most engaging Zoom presenter I have ever known.