People Who Stutter
Also known as: PWS, Person Who Stutters, Adults Who Stutter, AWS, Children Who Stutter, CWS
An identity-first and community-preferred term for people who experience stuttering, a neurodevelopmental condition involving involuntary speech disfluencies such as blocks, prolongations, and repetitions. PWS affects roughly 1% of the global population. Community usage (PWS, AWS, CWS) is preferred by many stuttering advocates over deficit-framed clinical language like 'stutterer' or 'dysfluent speaker,' and is used in accessibility research, advocacy, and disability-first AI datasets.
Category: Disability Terminology · Speech and Language · Neurodiversity · Disability Identity
Related: Stuttering · Disfluency · Speech-Language Pathology · Neurodiversity