1. Why can’t Deaf people just speech read?

2. Can you?

3. These words look identical on the lips…try it!
Buy My Pie

4. These words look identical on the lips…try it!
Talent Salad

5. These words look identical on the lips…try it!
Mop Pop Bob

6. These words look identical on the lips…try it!
Queen White

7. These words look identical on the lips…try it!
Shoot Shoes Jews Juice June Chews

8. Where there’s life, there’s hope! Where’s the lavender soap?

9. Number pairs are identical as well….
17-70
18-80
19-90

10. English is not an easy language to speechread.
The best estimates are that 30% to 35% of English sounds can be speechread.
In order for a sound to be easily speechread, it must be formed on the lips and/or in the front of the mouth.
Unfortunately for us, we form many English sounds in the middle of our mouths. Others come from the back of our mouths and even in our throats. These are absolutely impossible to speechread:
 P/B K/G T/D F/V S/Z
As a result, a perfect speechreader only would be able to speechread about one third of what is said. They guess at the rest, some people are remarkably good at guessing but no one is perfect.

11. Some people are very easy to speechread.
However, be aware that about 10% of the population move their lips in such a way that it is absolutely impossible to speechread, even one word they say.
Most people fall somewhere in between. When a Deaf person does well speechreading one person, their family/friends/co-workers might think that they can do that with anyone. This is just not true.

12. Difficult scenarios in which to speechread include:
Lack of a clear view of the speaker's lips. This includes:
obstructions such as moustaches or hands in front of the mouth
the speaker's head turned aside or away
dark environment
a bright back-lighting source such as a window behind the speaker, darkening the face.

13. Difficult scenarios in which to speechread include:
Group discussions, especially when multiple people are talking in quick succession. The challenge here is to know where to look.
Use of an unusual tone or rhythm of speech by the speaker, accents

14. Another factor to consider is that people are not all created equal in our ability to speechread.
Studies show that only 23% of hard of hearing people become effective speechreaders. That means that a whopping 77% need to use other means of communicating.

15. A downside of speechreading, and one that is not obvious, is that it is very tiring.
Speechreading takes enormous concentration. They have to work very hard to understand what is being said.
They must follow every lip movement, every facial expression, every gesture, to try to find meaning in what you are saying.
They cannot relax their eyes for even a moment and have a nice easy conversation like people with normal hearing can.

16. Speechreading is not just watching speech movements, but trying to make sense of the message.
Speech reading brains have to work five times as hard to understand speech as do those of people with normal hearing. In the course of a day, their brains have done as much mental gymnastics as a person with normal hearing does in a whole week!
Another downside of speechreading is that they spend so much of their time just trying to understand the words the person is saying that they can easily miss the meaning that the person is trying to communicate.

17. Let’s see how well you do……