Life at www.stammering.org
by Allan Tyrer

More and more nowadays we see companies and organisations advertising their website address. The British Stammering Association is no exception. Our website at www.stammering.org is a key part of the public face of the BSA, as well as being important in helping the BSA fulfil its objectives. Many people have their first contact with the BSA through the website and anyone interested in stammering, particularly in the UK, should find the site well worth a visit.

The BSA's website is also important in the scheme of stammering resources on the internet generally. There are relatively few major stammering websites in the world and I would say the BSA website is one of them. Of course our links page links to numerous other stammering resources on the internet, not least the incredible Stuttering Homepage run by Judy Kuster in the US.

The BSA website was started by Chris Cox and involved a huge amount of work by him to build. It went online in October 1997. I took over looking after the website as a volunteer in January 2000. The look of the website is now rather different from that designed by Chris. Soon after I took over we decided to adopt a new design produced by Guy Hancock, the son of one of the BSA trustees. One of my first jobs - and it took months to do - was to make sure the whole website was transferred over into the new format. Nevertheless, the website still largely follows the structure established by Chris and has almost all of the same content, plus many additions of course.

For me a key element of the structure is the separate sections for different categories of interested people - be they parents of pre-school children, school-children and their parents, teenagers, adults who stammer, their partners, therapists, or teachers. So each type of person can be taken straight to information on stammering and BSA activities which are of particular relevance to them.

Another important element of the website is the quality of its content. A lot of this consists of BSA information leaflets and past articles from Speaking Out. Pages on the website vary from authoritative information for a particular category of person (eg parents of a young child who has just started stammering) from an official BSA leaflet, to personal experiences and views of people who stammer, parents, therapists etc, to academic articles on research projects.

There have been quite a few recent additions to the website. For example we have redeveloped the contents page and added a search engine to help people find what they want on an ever-expanding website. I also added a page on internet mailing lists and chat rooms etc specifically for people who stammer. More recently we created an employment page to bring together the growing amount of employment-related materials on the website, and we have just managed to get our first ever sound file online, featuring some of our intrepid conference organisers being interviewed on BBC Radio Merseyside. Also the ground-breaking summary report of the Primary Healthcare Workers Project is now available for download from the website.

Another relatively recent addition is the discussion board. This enables people to post comments which then appear up on the website for everyone to see. We set this up last year as a way for people to discuss the BSA's constitutional changes, and also to give general feedback on the BSA. The board involved quite a learning curve on my part to set up and get going, but "touch wood" it seems to be working OK. As things turned out, the proposed constitutional changes seem to have been so uncontroversial that the board remained almost unused. However, we have now extended it to cover employment issues and I hope people will find it useful for that, and to discuss the draft employment materials for employees and employers which the BSA has just issued for consultation. The draft employment materials are of course available on the website. (Update: the employment materials have now been issued in final form.)

Other parts of the website have been there for ages (at least by internet time standards) and are no less important, not least the BSA leaflets and large collection of articles from past editions of Speaking Out. The events section lists up and coming events and courses around the country to do with stammering, and even the odd TV programme when we know one is coming up. Our self-help groups page tries to give an up-to-date list of selfhelp groups around the country, including proposed groups which people are trying to establish. (You don't need access to the website to check out any local self-help groups though - just phone the helpline on 0845 603 2001 and ask if there are any near you.)

A large but not so obvious part of the website is the 50 or so book, video and cassette reviews which link off the BSA shop and library pages (or off "review.html") - a good way to find out what books or other materials might interest you.

We are adding material to the website all the time. A good way to check the main additions since your last visit is to look at the "What's new" page (new.html), which is prominently linked off the homepage. (Update: since this article was written, we have also started email updates.) One area in which we are looking to expand the website in future is stammering research. I'm also working at the moment on a webpage to bring together materials on stammering therapy and courses - and we have various other plans for the future. In any event the website is here to stay, and it is likely to become more and more important as the internet becomes more accessible, and indeed a part of life, for ever increasing numbers of people.

From the Spring 2001 edition of Speaking Out.