INTERNATIONAL STAMMERING AWARENESS DAY, ISAD 22nd OCTOBER, STAMMA CAMPAIGN

STAMMA, the British Stammering Association, are marking ISAD, by launching a change.org petition aimed at eleven of the major media agencies, calling for stammering to be portrayed in the media in the same way that different regional accents are portrayed - in chat shows, drama, documentaries, news programmes or continuity announcements.

As part of the campaign, STAMMA have released a series of interviews asking people when was the first or last time they saw someone on TV who stammered, and when they saw someone on TV not talking about stammering.

The campaign will be supplemented with comedy sketch videos from Nina G and Marc Winski from the USA, who stammer and who are loved for their online comedy and social media presence, along with people who stammer talking about themselves in a series of #IStammerToo shorts. The videos reveal the wide spectrum of stammering, where some are heard to stammer and others aren’t. Because whilst you might not hear people stammer, their struggle to sound fluent remains.

CEO Jane Powell said, "It is time to end the zero visibility of stammering. Until we hear and see people who stammer in the media, people will continue to respond inappropriately when they hear someone stammer.  This is a legacy we can't leave our children."

The campaign will launch on 12^th October and carry through until 22^nd October. The petition at change.org/NoDiversityWithoutDisfluency will continue beyond ISAD, and can be signed by anyone around the world.

Over the next year, STAMMA will track how the media will include disfluent voices in their programming and what efforts they take to ensure that stammering is accounted for in all their recruitment and HR policies.