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Clubhouse, the Shift to Spoken Social Media, and the Voices That Will Be Silenced

• Lawrence Weru discusses the Clubhouse app and what it is like as a person with a stutter. The invite-only app can gather over 1,000 people together in “rooms” for voice chats, where you can raise a ‘hand’ to ask to speak on the stage. He describes the anxiety stutterers feel when ‘raising the hand’ to speak on Clubhouse, and the instinct to just stay silent.
• Lawrence has listened to several hours of Clubhouse conversations per week, but it was 49 days before he heard someone with a stutter take to the stage. To put that into context, around 15% of Americans have a speech/language/voice disorder, often starting between the ages of 2 and 6, with a 1 in 4 chance of it staying for life.
• There is an increasing reliance on voice to interact with technology, making life difficult for stutterers: automated phone systems which require specific words without substitution, and Siri/Alexa which misinterpret pauses in speech as the end of the command. Clubhouse, and Twitter’s similar new “Spaces” feature, are continuing the move towards real-time voice. There’s an unfortunate lack of suggested solutions in the article, but it is worth a read to be made aware of the issue.

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