My parents have told me that I didn’t say my first word until I was three years old. When I was a child, I knew I didn’t talk like other kids and I initially believed there was something wrong with my vocal cords. At some point I learned that my stutter is genetic, having been passed down from my father’s side of the family. His stutter is a bit different from mine, and his twin brother also stutters.

It is not enough for an Employer to accommodate you. To protect yourself, it is necessary for you and Employer to enter into an Accommodation Agreement.  Accommodation Agreements are written documents that outline your accommodation(s) in the workplace and identify considerations like who will have access to the document, where it will be kept, and the review and renewal dates. Having a written record helps to make sure all Parties benefit from the same information and understanding of your accommodations. 

My name is Samuel Sinanan, and I am a person who stutters. I have been a stutterer all my life. This year was the first time I attended a Canadian Stuttering Association (CSA) Conference. My previous experience with the CSA community was attending support meetings held by what was then known as the Calgary Support Group, about four years ago.    

I recently had the great pleasure of attending the CSA ( Canadian Stuttering Association) annual conference for the first time in early November. I had always wanted to attend an international conference, and this was held in Montréal, Québec. As this was less than a four hour drive from New York, a friend and I jumped at the chance to attend.

Navigating the world with a non-visible disability can be incredibly challenging. These disabilities, though unseen, can impact life just as significantly as visible ones. They often create a journey filled with obstacles that affect many aspects of life, including social interactions, mental health, and, in extreme cases, physical well-being.

As I was growing up, the word "stutter" was never spoken in my household, leading me to believe that it was this taboo concept that should not be discussed. I slipped through the cracks of the school system and was never identified for speech therapy. By the time I reached young adulthood, I was a master at changing words before getting stuck, even if it meant changing the meaning of my sentences. I pretended to forget words or not to know an answer, hoping someone else would fill it in for me.

In this Article, I examine workplace accommodations. If you read my other Articles, you will note that I have touched upon the general theme of accommodations and the duty to accommodate. For those of you who attended my presentation at the CSA’s Connecting Voices conference in Montreal, this Article will have some overlap with my presentation.  

The One & Only Record from 1971

I have virtually no contemporaneous notes written at the time about how I got better, except one I located decades ago.  For decades, I had no intention of ever going public with the details of my stuttering as I felt too ashamed.  In the meantime, I lost track of the details in this note. But finally, on Wednesday September 27 2023, I carefully studied word for word this note written in a scribbler on November 22 1971. In its own quiet, beautiful way it describes one example of the entire healing process the day after it happened.