This Whole Stupid LipReading Thing

I'm late-deafened. I can read lips, and I do pretty well at it. But I want to clarify what this means exactly because there seems to be a lot of misconception out there about super beings and miraculous lip reading skills.

First of all, let me just say right here if you ever saw the show F.B. EYE with the deaf Deanne Bray, you need to understand this is a TV show. It's make-believe. Fiction. No one in the real world reads lips THAT well. You have to be able to hear a little bit to be able to lip read. The more you hear, the better you do. Many deaf people have some residual hearing that helps them with lip reading and that's why some can "get by" with it.

I still have some low tone hearing. I am deaf to most speech sounds, but I because I hear some speech sounds--specifically vowels-- I can "get by" with lip reading. Vowel sounds are almost always made in the back of the throat. They can't be seen on the lips. Try it. Say the vowel sounds to yourself--short and long. Chances are the only time you'll move your lips is when you say the long O and long U. Even then, a deaf person wouldn't know if you were making the O, OO, or OW sound just by looking at your lips. I am lucky because I can hear the difference since I still hear low tones. There are vowels in every word. This helps me a LOT.

In fact, 70% of all sounds in the English language cannot be seen on the lips because the sounds are made in the back of the throat. If a person hears nothing at all, that means they must guess at 70% of what can't be seen. Doesn't that seem like an awful lot of guessing to you? It sure does to me.

Even if you were able to guess those 70% of sounds you can't see, you would still have more guessing to do. Why? Because so many other sounds look exactly alike on the lips-- t and d, k and g, p and b, f and v, s and z. I cannot hear the differences of any of these sounds. I cannot hear these sounds at all. When I talk to people, I have to guess.

Since I grew up hearing English and losing my hearing bit by bit, I learned an association of sound with lips. I have some context to help put the sounds in the right places. I understand the rhythm of speech, especially those voices I've known a long time. I can guess what some people are going to say before they say it, and sometimes I guess what they have said just by the rhythm of the sound because I know them. The point is I'm guessing what people are saying. I'm NOT "reading their lips."

I can not imagine how difficult it would be for a deaf child to learn this skill with no previous exposure to the sounds and rhythm of speech.

Then-- there are other problems with lipreading.
1. The person has an accent so he or she doesn't pronounce his or her letters the way most English speakers do.
2. The person doesn't move his or her lips while speaking. Some are so shy they barely move their mouths at all when they speak. Other people are paralyzed and can't.
3. The person has a speech impediment.
4. The person is self-conscious of his or her mouth and covers it a lot.
5. The person has a hairy beard that covers the lips.
6. The person has some kind of distracting oral tick or fixation such as playing with a pierced tongue, or talking out of the side of his or her mouth.
7. The person chews gum or bites nails.
8. The person is missing many teeth and cannot pronounce words correctly
9. There is glare behind the person's head, making it difficult for you to see the lips.
10. It's too dark.
11. The person is distracted or shy and has a hard time facing you. Or simply won't!
12. There is background noise drowning out what little sound you hear, so you have to guess even more than 70% of the conversation.
(I probably haven't covered everything here so feel free to list a few of your own if you think of something.)

Let's face it. Lipreading is a fine TOOL, but it's not a great way to communicate. It requires way too much work. Knowing all these facts about lip reading makes shows like F. B. Eye upsetting to me mainly because it promotes unrealistic expectations of the deaf.

When my progressive hearing loss was first diagnosed my doctor encouraged me to learn to lip read, but it turned out I already knew how, because I had picked it up on my own as a kid. I was "assessed" as an expert lip reader-- meaning I could lip read those 30% of sounds that could be seen on the lips. However, the lip reading didn't help. I was stressed all the time trying to communicate with people. Can you imagine trying to guess what people were talking about 70% of the time? HLA (SHHH) also encourages lip reading by passing out little buttons to wear in public with they words, "Face me, I lip read." This is so wrong to do because, again I want to stress, it promotes the false assumption that lip-reading is a way to communicate.

Often I let people know I read lips, but I also tell them I'm learning ASL too. I wish someone (like HLA) had encouraged me to learn ASL earlier. I have talked to so many late-deafened people who feel disappointed in their inabilities to learn lip reading. They thought it would be easy, then found out how hard it was. They thought there was something wrong with them, rather than with the program!!

People who promote lip reading skills promote false hope for all hard-of-hearing, d-deaf, and D-deaf. They set us up for failure. It doesn't work! What we need-- the late-deafened especially- is more community outreach so we and our families can learn ASL.