Roughly 11 million children in the United States live with speech-language disorders. The therapists who serve them manage caseloads that make individualized follow-up nearly impossible. After a 30-minute session ends, children return to homes without structured practice tools, and the gains made in clinic erode before the next appointment.

Black children with developmental disabilities receive speech therapy referrals at lower rates than White and Hispanic peers. When minority children reach therapy, the tools available for home practice default to accent profiles that exclude their communities. A child who hears a voice that sounds nothing like their family treats the exercise as foreign, not familiar. Engagement drops.

Meanwhile, therapists lose hours each week to manual transcription and clinical documentation, time that could be spent in direct care. The average SLP spends one hour writing notes for every one hour of therapy delivered. Carry-over, the generalization of clinical gains to everyday communication, remains the field's most persistent challenge because no one has built the bridge between session and home.