Speech Reading

The practice of understanding speech by visually interpreting a speaker's lip movements, facial expressions, gestures, and body language. Speech reading is used by many Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing individuals as a communication strategy, often in combination with residual hearing or other access methods. It is inherently limited — research suggests only about 30-40% of English sounds are visually distinguishable on the lips — making it an unreliable sole means of communication. Technologies like AR-based captioning can complement speech reading by providing text alongside the visual cues from the speaker's face.