1103L - Stuttering: Ableism and Speech-Language Pathologists

This session is developed by, and presenters invited by, SIG 4: Fluency and Fluency Disorders. Neither people who stutter nor their clinicians exist in a vacuum. They exist in a societal context that has negative views of stuttering specifically and disability generally. This prejudice, known as ableism, assumes that people are better off as able-bodied and any deviation from this ideal constitutes a loss. It is within the context of ableism that people who stutter and their clinicians make meaning of stuttering. Ableist norms limit how we think, feel, and experience stuttering. In this talk, we will introduce the concept of ableism and explain its consequences. We discuss how ableism influences how both people who stutter and clinicians think about stuttering. Finally, we make suggestions to resist ableism and create new, more positive, stuttering discourses.