  Stuttering is a speech disorder influencing over 70 million people worldwide,
including 13 million in China. It causes low self-esteem among other
detrimental effects on people who stutter (PwS). Although prior work has
explored approaches to assist PwS, they primarily focused on western contexts.
In our formative study, we found unique practices and challenges among Chinese
PwS. We then iteratively designed an online tool, CoPracTter, to support
Chinese PwS practicing speaking fluency with 1) targeted stress-inducing
practice scenarios, 2) real-time speech indicators, and 3) personalized timely
feedback from the community. We further conducted a seven-day deployment study
(N=11) to understand how participants utilized these key features. To our
knowledge, it is the first time such a prototype was designed and tested for a
long time with multiple PwS participants online simultaneously. Results
indicate that personalized practice with targeted scenarios and timely feedback
from a supportive community assisted PwS in speaking fluently, staying
positive, and facing similar real-life circumstances.
