Aligning Stuttered-Speech Research with End-User Needs: Scoping Review, Survey, and Guidelines
This work addresses the problem of speech recognition systems failing for stuttered speech by aligning research with end-user needs, though it is incremental as it synthesizes existing perspectives rather than introducing new technological breakthroughs.
The paper tackled the misalignment between stuttered-speech research and end-user needs by conducting a scoping review and a survey of 70 stakeholders, resulting in a taxonomy, identification of research gaps, and concrete guidelines to address the real needs of the stuttering community.
Atypical speech is receiving greater attention in speech technology research, but much of this work unfolds with limited interdisciplinary dialogue. For stuttered speech in particular, it is widely recognised that current speech recognition systems fall short in practice, and current evaluation methods and research priorities are not systematically grounded in end-user experiences and needs. In this work, we analyse these gaps through 1) a scoping review of papers that deal with stuttered speech and 2) a survey of 70 stakeholders, including adults who stutter and speech-language pathologists. By analysing these two perspectives, we propose a taxonomy of stuttered-speech research, identify where current research directions diverge from the needs articulated by stakeholders, and conclude by outlining concrete guidelines and directions towards addressing the real needs of the stuttering community.