For families of DHH children using hearing aids & cochlear implants

Ignite your child's language development through conversations, every day.

SparkMinds is an LLM-powered app that helps families of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children turn everyday life into language learning opportunities. Meals, play time, car rides, and story time become intentional language learning moments with SparkMinds. Built on sound science, SparkMinds is created by world-renowned experts with decades of professional experience in family-centered, listening and spoken language intervention.

For HA & CI families Science-based Expert-created
The early years are critical

Language learning happens
in the first five years.

The first five years of life is a period of extraordinary neurological opportunity. Children's brains are forming auditory pathways, neural connections, and cognitive scaffolding that will underpin language, literacy, and thinking for life. Learning to listen and speak after the age of five, while not impossible, is much more challenging.

For DHH children using hearing devices, harnessing the young brain's learning ability is even more critical. With optimum hearing access and a language-rich environment, DHH children will reach their full potential. The science is clear on this.

What's less clear, for most families, is how to make it happen.

Research has consistently shown that the single most powerful factor driving language development isn't therapy. It's the quality and quantity of language-rich, meaningful interactions in daily life.

How families engage in everyday conversations makes the biggest difference. SparkMinds is built to help parents become their child's best communication partner.

The reality for most parents

Hearing devices open the door.
Language development is up to you, the family.

You got the diagnosis. You found the best audiologist and invested in hearing technology. Now you are planning your life around audiology appointments and therapy sessions.

But you're still wondering: am I doing enough for my child?

Most families with DHH children are doing far more than they're given credit for. But many are also carrying a quiet, persistent worry:

"My child can hear now. Why isn't she speaking yet?"

"Am I doing this right?"

"What more can I do to help my child learn language?"

These worries aren't unjustified. They are signs you understand what's at stake.

You can do far more through daily conversations than you realize or are told. SparkMinds helps you help your child, with clarity and confidence.

The shift

It's not about doing more.
It's about doing it more intentionally.

Children learn language while living life. They learn best through play, through daily routines, while having fun, not through activities that imitate therapy.

You already have these moments. Breakfast. The car ride. Play time. Bedtime. These aren't breaks in your child's learning. They are precisely the opportunities that accelerate language development, when used intentionally.

SparkMinds doesn't teach your child for you. It gives you clear guidance for what to do in the moment, what to pay attention to, and how to know what's working for your child.

SparkMinds is also not a replacement for your child's teachers and therapists. SparkMinds is a tool that parents can use with professionals to transform everyday conversations into language learning opportunities.

The SparkMinds experience

SparkMinds delivers daily guidance
that ignites language development.

Clarity

You will know exactly what to do today. SparkMinds gives you a fun, individualized activity that helps your child build a specific language skill while "just playing."

Confidence

You stop second-guessing whether you are helping your child's language development between therapy sessions. You will know you are. Every day you practice, you will make progress.

Calm

Your constant anxiety about "doing enough" will be replaced by a quiet certainty that comes from seeing continuous progress.

Built for you

Built from the ground up
for DHH families.

SparkMinds is being created from the ground up by Dr. Uma Soman, a globally recognized leader in family-centered listening and spoken language intervention. SparkMinds algorithms deliver on-demand guidance individualized for your family to optimize your child's unique learning journey.

Science Based Grounded in early language and development research
Expert Led Based on frameworks created by experts
Limited onboarding

We're onboarding Founding Families carefully.

We're inviting a limited number of DHH families from around the world to help us build SparkMinds into something that truly serves DHH children worldwide.

For HA & CI families No commitment required Careful, limited rollout
The Science

The science we build on.

SparkMinds is grounded in four well-established areas of research about how young children, including children using hearing aids and cochlear implants, develop listening and spoken language.

Pillar one

Neuroplasticity and the early window of opportunity.

The young brain is most receptive to structured language input in the first five years of life. Early, consistent listening experience during this period shapes the auditory pathways and the cortical maps that underpin spoken language for the rest of childhood and beyond.

The window does not close on a single day. But it narrows continually, which is why early access to sound and rich, responsive language input at home are both especially important during the first several years.

Pillar two

The listening and spoken language framework.

Listening and spoken language (LSL) is an established approach that builds spoken communication primarily through the auditory channel. It is one of several valid communication choices DHH families can make. SparkMinds supports families who have chosen this path - never positions it as superior to other approaches.

The LSL framework builds on long-established developmental science, including the listening hierarchy, language development milestones, and parent-coaching models that emphasize the parent's role as the primary communication partner.

Pillar three

High-quality language experiences.

Early language experience drives more than just the number of words a child learns. Meaningful, interactive conversations, in particular, are one of the strongest predictors of language and cognitive development in all children. The quality of parent-child interaction–its responsiveness and richness–consistently predicts educational outcomes more powerfully than just the quantity of words spoken.

These early language experiences build word knowledge as well as world knowledge. They lay the foundation for cognition, literacy, and social-emotional skills. In short, high-quality early language experiences drive life-long success.

Pillar four

Family-centered early intervention.

DHH children vary enormously, by age of identification, device type, fitting history, listening experience, family language environment, and developmental stage. Individualized coaching models, in which guidance is tailored to the specific child and family, consistently show better outcomes than one-size-fits-all advice.

SparkMinds makes it easy for you to benefit from these foundational aspects that make family-centered LSL intervention in the early years highly effective. SparkMinds' personalization algorithms deliver the LSL expertise honed with decades of real-world experience, tailored specifically to your family and your child.

If you are a clinician, teacher of the deaf, audiologist, or early intervention provider and would like a more detailed conversation about SparkMinds, please write to hello@sparkminds.co.

Founding Families

Ready to put this
into a daily practice?

SparkMinds turns these foundations into something a parent can actually do, today.

Meet the founder

Built by a leading expert.
Driven by life experience.

Founder

Uma Gokhale Soman

Founder & CEO

M.E.D., Ph.D., LSLS Cert. AVEd.

Uma was seven years old when her baby sister was diagnosed with bilateral profound hearing loss. For the next fifteen years, Uma watched her mother turn every meal, every errand, every story into an intentional language learning activity. It became their way of life. And it shaped Uma's life trajectory.

Today, Uma's sister is a thriving, independent adult who speaks, works, and is raising a family of her own. That outcome wasn't guaranteed. It was earned, one day, one conversation at a time, made possible because by luck her family found the right support at the right moment.

For far too many of the million children born with hearing loss each year, effective support is still a matter of luck. SparkMinds exists to change that.

It delivers science-based daily guidance tailored to each child's learning profile and each family's life. It meets parents where they already are: in the kitchen, on the school run, at bedtime. SparkMinds turns these everyday moments into opportunities to build language.

SparkMinds is the culmination of Uma's life's work. For more than twenty years she has worked, in every way possible, to help DHH children reach their full potential: as an educator of deaf children–in person and online with families around the world; as a consultant to general education teachers, and as a professor at five leading US universities. Uma is also a founder of the global nonprofit Listening Together and is building professional capacity through online courses, across 11 countries, from India and USA to South Africa, UAE, and UK, while also mentoring professionals in USA and India toward LSLS certification, the highest credential in listening and spoken language. With SparkMinds, this expertise can reach every parent, wherever they are, whenever they need it, not only those who can connect with the right professional.

SparkMinds is here for the days when language learning is at its peak, the days you can't afford to miss. Not as a matter of luck. As a matter of course.

Advisors

Coming soon.

We've assembled a group of world-renowned advisors in listening and spoken language. We'll introduce them here soon.

Coming soon
Coming soon
Coming soon
Join the team

Want to build SparkMinds with us?

We're a small team doing serious work, with care, humility, and a sense of humor. If you're a builder or a domain expert who wants your work to matter in real families' lives, we'd love to meet you.

Careers

Serious about the mission.
Never self-serious.

We're building a human-centered, AI-powered platform for early childhood development. This is work with impact that reaches far beyond the 34 million DHH children in the world. We're mission-driven, but not zealots: we have high standards, low ego, and a people-first approach.

Who thrives here

How we work.

Mission-driven, in service of people

We focus on outcomes, on impact. We're here to build things that matter, and do the work to make them great.

High standards, low ego

We take pride in craft and treat each other generously. We revise, refactor, and polish quietly. Excellence is the bar; credit follows contribution.

Human-centered, especially with AI

We ask "should we?" as often as "can we?" We design for dignity, privacy, and emotional safety.

The work is challenging and the stakes are real. Families trust us with their most vulnerable moments. If that is motivating rather than daunting, you're probably our kind of person.

Who we're looking for

Two kinds of people, right now.

Technical leadership & product

Experienced engineering leaders and product builders who are passionate about using AI for good and ready to build something huge, from zero to one, in messy real-world conditions.

Listening & spoken language experts

Domain experts in listening and spoken language development who want to shape expert, family-centered guidance that reaches DHH children and families everywhere.

Get in touch

Tell us why you want to join us.

Write to us with a little about yourself and why this work matters to you. No formalities needed, just a real note from a real person.

Become a Founding Team Member
Founding families

Help shape the future of early language development.

We're onboarding a carefully selected group of DHH families from around the world to ensure SparkMinds is being built right — not just built fast. Founding Families get early access, a direct feedback channel, and the chance to influence what this platform becomes.

What it means to be a Founding Family

This is an opportunity
to guide the future.

We're inviting families who want to be part of building something that genuinely serves DHH children around the world and the families working every day to give them the best possible future.

Early access

You'll be among the first families to access SparkMinds when we open onboarding — before the general waitlist.

Direct influence

Your feedback shapes what SparkMinds becomes. Features, personalization, guidance format — we want to hear what works and what doesn't.

Priority for your network

Founding Families can invite other DHH parents to join the list — and those families receive priority placement.

We are intentionally onboarding slowly because real personalization takes real care. We're choosing to do this right rather than rushing it out.

Accept the Invitation

Tell us about your family.

No commitment required.

If a SparkMinds family invited you, enter their code here. If you arrived through their link, it's already filled in.

We use your information only to personalize your SparkMinds experience and keep you informed about your status. We don't share it, sell it, or use it for anything else.

✓

You're in.

Thank you for joining the SparkMinds Founding Families. We'll be in touch soon with what to expect next.

While you wait, you'll receive occasional guidance from our team — practical, research-grounded tips for building listening and language at home. No noise. Just signal.

Know another DHH parent who would benefit from daily guidance? We've sent you an email with a referral code.

Is this right for you?

SparkMinds is currently onboarding:

Parents of children with hearing aids and/or cochlear implants.

Families actively pursuing listening and spoken language as their primary communication approach

Caregivers who want to reinforce therapy at home — not replace it