Re-envisioning Remote Meetings: Co-designing Inclusive and Empowering Videoconferencing with People Who Stutter

Videoconferencing (VC) has become a prominent and normalized mode of professional and personal communication, introducing universally experienced challenges such as reduced non-verbal cues and "Zoom Fatigue." But People who stutter (PWS) encounter these obstacles with extra hurdles as existing VC technologies often rely on assumptions about speech patterns that don't accommodate stuttering. Leveraging and driven by the unique insights and experiences of PWS on VC, we conducted a two-phase co-design study with PWS to explore and reflect on the design space for inclusive and empowering VC technologies from their perspectives. Our findings present a broad design space for tools that support PWS before, during, and after VC, focusing on aspects such as supporting self-disclosure, educating non-stuttering audiences, and promoting personal reflection for long-term self-growth. While many design ideas by our participants embody universal value to all VC users, some carry an activism approach that proactively disrupts existing communication flows and norms to redistribute the power between stuttering and non-stuttering speakers in VC meetings. This work contributes to a thorough analysis of the design space and empowering PWS to be drivers and designers of inclusive VC experiences.