Ending the phone call nightmares: Working with customers with speech disabilities 2026

In this IIL inclusion and diversity session, Kirsten Howells outlines the findings of the Phone Accessibility report published in October 2025, which identified the barriers people who stammer face in their interactions with businesses, particularly in the finance sector. She’ll then highlight practical, straightforward recommendations for change, focusing on three key areas and providing examples of where these changes have already been successfully adopted.

People who stammer make at least 43 million calls to businesses and organisations in the UK each year, seeking to have a live phone conversation to ask a question or resolve an issue. Yet over 65% of those calls are mishandled. Callers who stammer or have other speech disabilities are frequently hung up on, laughed at, interrupted, and talked over by call agents who don’t know about stammering. IVR systems trap callers who stammer when they don’t provide enough time to talk or don’t understand stammered speech. And the dysfluencies inherent in stammering are sometimes misinterpreted by both AI and human agents as signs of hesitancy or even dishonesty, thereby influencing how fraud flags are raised.

In this session, we’ll explain what’s normal for people who stammer, the barriers they face, and simple, practical changes you can implement. These changes can benefit customers who stammer, as well as those with a wide range of other speech disabilities.

Learning objectives

• Identify common barriers customers who stammer face in contact with the finance sectors (related to both AI processes and human call handlers), including statistics and real-life examples
• Learn about effective process changes that can remove those barriers, making insurance more accessible to customers who stammer or have other speech disabilities
• Practical resources to take away