Lip Reading - Cues

Cues

Thus a speechreader must use cues from the environment and a knowledge of what is likely to be said. It is much easier to speechread customary phrases such as greetings than utterances that appear in isolation and without supporting information, such as the name of a person never met before. Speechreaders who have grown up deaf may never have heard the spoken language and are unlikely to be fluent users of it, which makes speechreading much more difficult. They must also learn the individual visemes by conscious training in an educational setting. In addition, speechreading takes a lot of focus, and can be extremely tiring. For these and other reasons, many deaf people prefer to use other means of communication with non-signers, such as mime and gesture, writing, and sign language interpreters. When conversing with a speechreader, exaggerated mouthing of words is not considered to be helpful and may in fact obscure useful clues. However, it is possible to learn to emphasize useful clues; this is known as "lip speaking".