People living with hearing loss often develop excellent speechreading skills. Speechreading, or lip reading, is the ability to read words on a speaker’s lips as well as their gestures and facial expressions to interpret speech and participate in a conversation.
Even people without hearing loss use speech or lipreading in noisy places, sometimes without realizing it. However, for people with hearing loss who might naturally become adept at speechreading, it still requires effort and learning communication skills to become proficient.
If you or someone you love is living with hearing loss and frequently uses lipreading, it’s important to know some things that can affect one’s ability to lipread, including these:
Covered lips
Many times, people place their hands over their mouths while talking without even noticing, whether it’s to stifle a yawn or just because someone is pondering. This is an obvious problem when you’re conversing with a friend or family member with hearing loss who partially relies on speechreading. Do your best to keep your hands away from your face. For example, if you have to yawn, pause to do it, rather than continuing to talk as many people do!
Mustaches
Another thing that can make speechreading difficult is when a man has a mustache. If you have hearing loss and your spouse has a mustache, explain to him why it’s difficult for you to converse with him. As Gael Hannan, the editor of The Better Hearing Consumer, puts it in a candid blog post on mustaches: “If hairs go even a smidgen over the edge of a masculine upper lip, my ability to understand the man’s speech is compromised. How well lips move or articulate speech movements or sounds is a crucial component in successful speechreading.”
Background noise
Speechreading is often a must when there is much background noise. However, just like with hearing, lip reading is compromised when there is too much background noise. This is because using one’s remaining hearing is still an important part of lipreading. It’s estimated that between 70 and 80 percent of speech cannot be read on the lips. The listener must rely on context, visual cues and residual sound to understand more than the 20 to 30 percent of speech that can be read on the lips. However, in background noise, assistive listening devices like personal amplifiers can give a good boost to the person with hearing loss, providing a better conversational experience.
Language complexities
If the person being speechread is using colloquial language, abstract concepts or complex sentence structure, these things will make speechreading a bit more difficult to access. When speaking to someone with hearing loss who relies on lipreading, you can help them out by using precise sentences rather than rambling and doing away with colloquial language. It also helps if you speak at an even pace – not too quickly or slowly – and let the listener know if you’re changing the topic.
Patience and a sense of humor are a must! Mistakes will happen, but if the person is familiar with the context, it will be easier for him or her to follow along.
