Digital Technologies for Children With Hearing Impairments to Support Language Learning: Scoping Review.

The review deliberately did not appraise the quality of the included studies, and the authors say the results should not be read as showing that any intervention is effective. Only English-language studies were included, so relevant work from non-English-speaking regions is missing. Most included studies were small and short, averaging 23 participants, with different outcome measures, so the authors call the results exploratory rather than confirmatory. Only 21 of the 45 studies described how severe the children's hearing loss was, and the other 24 gave no detail at all, so it is hard to know which children a tool was actually tested on. Most tools were designed for classroom use and rarely extended to therapy or home practice, and many lacked therapic dashboards, adaptive progression or structured parent involvement. Publication bias and selective reporting may have shaped the picture, along with the exclusion of non-English publications. Technology dates quickly, and the authors note this may limit how long the tools identified here stay usable.

The authors state that no external funding or grants were received for this work, and that they have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Do not read this review as evidence that any of these apps or devices work. It included 45 studies but only 12 reported any outcomes, no quality appraisal was done, and the authors themselves call the findings exploratory. The reported gains in vocabulary, speech sounds, reading and maths come from small, short studies with different measures, so they cannot tell you which tool to choose.