Isn’t it true that people with hearing loss automatically become good lipreaders?
No. While people with hearing loss do rely more heavily on gestures and facial expressions to understand meaning, people vary widely in their ability to speechread. Even with practice, research shows that only 3 out of 10 words in English can be speechread clearly. Hard of hearing people often take speechreading classes to increase their understanding of a conversation but need to use it with a number of other techniques. And, a person’s ability to speechread effectively can depend greatly on lighting, how stressed or tired they are, the position of the speaker and several other factors over which they may have no control.
