Stuttering: Falling through a hole in the academic web?

by Sarah Ettorre

Grant Meredith is studying engagements of stuttering students in Australian universities with the schools’ disability services. At this point he is focusing on the accessibility and content of the information that potential students are able to find on the websites of 39 universities that can support them into and through academia. One point of his was to find out whether each site contained the direct contact details for the disability liaison officers. He found that each site offered a range of methods to contact the DLOs (phone, email, postal, etc.), an important option for people who may not wish to use the telephone. An issue he found was that about half of the schools did not provide the specific name of a DLO. This can be problematic for stutterers, as searching for a name or not knowing who to speak with can add another later of anxiety and pressure to a situation that they may already find challenging.
Another major issue investigated in this article was whether universities offered public access to any type of guides that provide staff with information concerning the teaching as assessment of disabled- especially stuttering or speech-impaired- students. Though half of the universities did provide access to disability related teaching information, most were not accessible to the general public, and were concerned with popular disabilities (hearing impairment, mobility, mental health, etc.). Disappointingly few of the sites had any information specifically on speech impaired students, including stuttering. What little was provided was very general in content, relatively short, and not well thought out. Many of the strategies for speech impaired students were general teaching strategies should in place to benefit all students, for example ``maintain eye contact``. A simple `Google` search provided the few strategies that were offered, often verbatim. The author was sorely disappointed to discover how little effort is being put into providing the public, potential and current students, and faculty with potentially valuable information from people whose job it is to disseminate such information. Meredith finishes off with a push for such education about stuttering to come from stutterers themselves. He feels being proactive in matters of education, and presenting information to various disability services is the best way to raise awareness, understanding and to formulate strategies for assistance.
The comment I posed to Grant Meredith was that disabilities liaison officers may not be the best people in most universities to advise about certain 'disabilities'. Many universities have undergraduate and graduate programs specializing in speech disorders and/or speech-language pathology. My query was whether these departments’ students and faculty should be involved in disseminating the appropriate information to potential students and teaching staff. It could be made into a special project for the students, and linked to the university's disability services site. This would keep the information provided current and hopefully not blindly taken from other sites.
His response was that the idea of getting SLPs, associated departments and students to disseminate information is a great idea, but may difficult to coordinate. He posed the question back....Are there a lot of programs specializing in speech disorders and/or speech-language pathology that teach and know a lot about stuttering? Direction has to come from those most educated and currently up to date in the field. I guess that is why I preach that PWS themselves should be more pro-active about education the public and the decision makers in the world. An international program of mass stuttering awareness and education to all sectors is called for.