Kelsey Stauffer, M.S., CCC-SLP
For millions of people, it’s not easy to get the speech therapy they need. AI is making speech therapy more accessible by helping therapists create personalized materials, conduct smarter assessments, and reach people who previously had little or no access to care.
Key takeaways
AI tools help speech therapists create relevant, customized therapy materials in minutes, allowing more time for direct client care.
Dynamic AI-assisted evaluations can adapt in real time to a client’s responses, giving the speech therapist a clearer picture of their abilities.
Online speech therapy powered by AI removes geographic and scheduling barriers that keep people from getting the help they need.
AI supports—but does not replace—the expertise of licensed speech therapists, who guide every clinical decision.
Why access to speech therapy has been unequal
Speech therapy has a well-known access problem. Many people face long waitlists or don’t have enough speech therapy providers in their area.
Roughly 40 million Americans live with a communication disorder. Yet there is a shortage of speech therapists, particularly in rural areas, low-income communities, and underserved school districts. Even for people in urban areas, quality speech therapy may be out of reach because of cost or appointment schedules. Or they may not have access to speech therapy that fits their cultural or language needs.
This gap isn’t new. But AI is giving speech therapists new tools to close it. Online speech therapy providers like Expressable were already making services available to people across the country. Now, AI is helping tackle the deeper challenges: therapy that doesn’t fit the person, assessments that take too long or aren’t as individualized, and administrative burden that pulls clinicians away from direct client care.
AI can lead to better outcomes in speech therapy. Here's what AI-powered speech therapy tools are doing for both clients and clinicians.
AI helps speech therapists create personalized, relevant therapy materials
One of the most time-consuming parts of being a speech therapist is creating materials that clients can use to practice at home. That’s because every client is different. A 5-year-old working on the /l/ sound needs different exercises than a 45-year-old recovering from a stroke. Speech therapy shouldn’t be “one size fits all.” But making these individualized resources can mean hours of searching, adapting, or designing from scratch.
AI tools are cutting that time dramatically. Natural language generation can quickly produce customized word lists, story prompts, conversation starters, and practice scripts that fit a client’s age, diagnosis, and interests. Plus, for bilingual families, AI can create materials in multiple languages. That makes it easier to practice at home in the language the child is most comfortable speaking.
When home practice activities are tailored to the person’s needs and interests, they’re more likely to use them and make more progress.
AI-generated practice materials can include:
Articulation word lists based on the specific speech sounds a client is working on
Reading passages at the right grade level featuring a child’s favorite characters or topics
Social scripts and conversation starters tailored to a teen’s real-life situations
Home practice exercises with clear parent instructions, available in English and Spanish
Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) vocabulary sets personalized to a client’s daily routines
Home practice is a big factor in how quickly clients make progress in speech therapy. And when those practice activities fit the person’s needs and interests, they’re more likely to use them and see success.
At Expressable, our speech therapists are using AI tools to deliver more individualized care to their clients. As one Expressable speech therapist puts it, “[Expressable’s in-house AI] decreases time spent on admin tasks, which saves me more time and energy for client contact.”
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Get started nowHow AI improves speech therapy evaluations
Every new client starts speech therapy with an evaluation. A dynamic assessment is a type of evaluation that measures not just what a person can do, but how they learn.
Instead of testing a fixed set of skills at a single point in time, dynamic assessments use a “test-teach-retest” model to understand a person’s learning potential. This approach is especially valuable for children who are bilingual, who haven’t taken many tests before, or whose scores on standardized tests may not show their true abilities.
A dynamic assessment measures not just what a person can do, but how they learn.
The evidence for this approach is strong. A 2019 meta-analysis published in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology found that dynamic assessment was consistently able to correctly identify language impairments in bilingual children. This is important, since bilingual children are often misidentified by standardized tests that were based on children who speak only English.
Dynamic assessments are effective, but they require a lot of work from the clinician. AI is changing this by enabling the clinician to create custom materials for the test-teach-retest in evaluations. AI makes it easier to regularly use this high-quality approach across a large number of clients.
Key advantages of AI-assisted dynamic assessment
Enables therapists to understand how a client responds to cues and prompting—not just whether they succeed
Reduces bias by not relying only on standardized scores that may not show a bilingual child’s true abilities
Shortens assessment time while providing more clinical information to the speech therapist
AI speech therapy tools can free up speech therapists to provide a higher level of care to their patients.
Can AI replace speech therapists?
No. AI is a tool, not a clinician. A licensed speech therapist brings something no algorithm can provide: clinical judgment built from years of training, experience, and deep knowledge of how communication develops across the lifespan. AI can make a word list; a clinician knows which words actually matter for this child, in this family, right now.
What AI does is take repetitive, time-consuming tasks off the clinician’s plate, freeing them to do what only a human can: build trust, read the room, adapt therapy in real time, and make decisions about a client’s care. At Expressable, every therapy plan is created and supervised by a licensed speech therapist. AI assists, but the clinician leads.
As the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has noted, AI in clinical practice requires careful oversight and adherence to ethical standards. Expressable’s approach is grounded in those principles: AI is a support tool, never a substitute for professional judgment.
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How AI is expanding access to quality online speech therapy
The combination of telehealth and AI is a major shift in improving access to personalized speech therapy. Online speech therapy was already removing geographic barriers—allowing families in rural areas or underserved neighborhoods to receive expert speech therapy. AI is now making those online sessions more relevant, useful, and appropriate.
In addition to creating personalized therapy materials, AI tools can generate session notes. That way the speech therapist can focus more on the client, rather than documenting everything that happens in a session. Expressable therapists report saving up to an hour per day on documentation tasks alone. This translates to more time spent preparing for and delivering direct client care.
Who benefits most from AI-assisted online speech therapy?
Children in rural or underserved areas with no local speech therapists
Adults recovering from stroke or brain injury who need home practice activities that are tailored closely to their needs
Bilingual people who need culturally appropriate materials
Busy families whose schedules make it tough to commute to in-person speech therapy
Parents and caregivers who want to attend sessions with their child, so they can learn how to support their child at home
AAC users whose vocabulary systems can be dynamically adjusted based on their evolving communication goals
Using ambient AI to help with clinical documentation allows speech and occupational therapists to spend more time focused on patients.
The future of accessible speech therapy starts now
AI won’t solve every access problem in speech therapy overnight. But it’s already making a big difference, with faster materials, smarter assessments, and more time for the human connection at the heart of good therapy. For the millions of people who have gone without care because it was too far away or too “one-size-fits-all,” that matters.
At Expressable, we’re committed to staying at the forefront of these tools so we can use them to serve our clients better.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
AI-powered speech therapy uses artificial intelligence tools to support licensed speech therapists in delivering care. AI tools help therapists create personalized practice materials, conduct adaptive assessments, and track client progress. AI handles time-consuming tasks like documenting session notes and analyzing speech patterns. The therapist remains in charge of all clinical decisions.
No. Diagnosing a speech or language disorder requires evaluation by a licensed speech-language pathologist. AI tools can flag patterns in a person’s speech that may need a closer look, but a diagnosis must be made by a qualified clinician after a comprehensive assessment.
AI can create customized practice materials—such as word lists, story prompts, and home practice exercises—tailored to a client’s goals, age, interests, and language background. This means therapy activities are more engaging and relevant to the person’s daily life.
A dynamic assessment evaluates not just what a client can do, but how well they learn with support. It uses a “test-teach-retest” model to understand a person’s potential for growth. It is considered especially useful for bilingual children or those whose standardized test scores may not reflect their true abilities.
Research supports the effectiveness of teletherapy for a wide range of speech and language goals. AI tools can enhance online sessions by enabling more personalized materials and real-time progress tracking. Expressable’s outcome data shows strong client progress across diagnoses when working with licensed speech therapists via telehealth.
AI tools can create therapy materials in multiple languages and support smarter assessments that account for bilingual language development. This helps clinicians avoid misidentifying typical bilingual language patterns as a disorder. It also ensures that practice activities fit the child’s home language environment.
Yes. Expressable’s licensed speech therapists use AI-assisted tools to create customized therapy materials, streamline documentation, and support dynamic assessments. All clinical decisions are made by licensed professionals.
How Expressable Can Help
Concerned your child isn't reaching age-expected milestones? Looking for communication support from a professional? Expressable is a national online speech and occupational therapy practice serving children and adults. We treat all major areas of communication, feeding, and developmental skills, offer flexible hours including evenings and weekends, and accept most major health insurance plans. We’re proud to have earned more than 4,500 5-star reviews from our clients (4.83/5 average).
Our therapy model is centered on parent and caregiver involvement. Research proves that empowering caregivers to participate in their loved one’s therapy leads to better outcomes. That’s why we combine live, 1-on-1 speech and occupational therapy with personalized education and home practice activities for faster progress.
