Lipreading Awareness Week seeks to promote an understanding of lipreading. It recognises the skill, raises awareness, and encourages inclusive communication
Lipreading is part of daily life for many deaf, deafened and hard-of-hearing people. Some rely on it completely, while others use it alongside hearing aids, implants, or even a handy notepad.
It’s a brilliant skill but not an easy one. Beards, fast talkers, poor lighting, or face coverings can make it harder and with less than half of speech sounds visible, it takes a lot of energy!
When a deaf, hard-of-hearing, or deafened person joins a group conversation, they might ask: “What are you talking about?”
A common reply is: “Work.”
On the surface, that sounds helpful but it still leaves the lipreader on the outside – it’s more helpful to go beyond one word answers
They know the topic, but not the actual conversation. It’s a bit like being told the title of a book, but never being allowed to read the page.
A more inclusive reply might be:
“We’re talking about work — Jo was saying his boss called a meeting this morning.”
That little bit of extra detail is what helps someone catch up and join in. It turns the moment from isolating to inclusive.
The average person accurately lipreads just over 10% of spoken words and it's considered exceptional to accurately read 30%
Accents, facial hair, poor lighting, fast speech, and masks can all make lipreading harder - turning simple chats into a real challenge.
If people aren’t aware, they often don’t know how to help and if you don’t know, you don’t know. That’s why lipreading awareness matters.
Lipreaders tune into subtlest mouth movements, facial expressions, gestures and what they already know about the conversation to piece together meaning. We call this decoding.
Lipreaders are constantly piecing together bits of visible speech, then holding them in their head while working out the meaning
Imagine you’re in a café. Someone says a word that looks like “coffee” or “copy.” The lip movements are almost identical — but because you’re in a café, “coffee” makes more sense.
Click the link to search practical online classes to strengthen and improve your lipreading skills.
Click the logo to search for 'Lipreading and Managing Hearing Loss' classes in your area
Keep your mouth visible
Say what you’re talking about (e.g. “at work today”)
At a natural pace, not too fast
Try different words if something isn’t understood
Speech-to-text apps are fine for casual chats but not when inaccuracy has consequences
For deaf, deafened, and hard-of-hearing people who lipread rather than use British Sign Language (BSL), professional communication support means having trained specialists who make spoken communication accessible.
This ensures lipreaders aren’t left to struggle alone and enables them to take part fully in meetings, training, healthcare, education, and social settings, with confidence and equity.
Relay UK is a free text relay service for deaf and hard-of-hearing people using specially trained relay assistants who convert speech to text and text to speech in real time
provide accurate written notes to support understanding and recall. These can be manual or electronic. Especially helpful in meetings or in education
sometimes called live captioners or palantypists. They use special phonetic keyboards to provide written transcript of what’s been said
trained professionals who repeat a speaker’s words clearly so they are easier to lipread. Great for deaf people who don’t use BSL and prefer to include social cues that are missed in notetaking and STTR
Research from the University of Michigan shows that lipreading activates the brain much like hearing speech, making it a complex and skilled process.
When people lipread, the auditory part of the brain activates just as if they were hearing real speech
The brain doesn’t just watch lips,it predicts missing sounds using context, memory, and language patterns
Lip movements are treated by the brain almost the same way as spoken sounds, showing how closely vision and hearing are linked
This is called sophisticated predictive processing proving that lipreading is not a “simple trick,” but a highly skilled, brain-intensive process
