Everything you need to know about lipreading

For many deaf and hard of hearing people, lipreading is something that they simply pick up as their hearing deteriorates. For professional lipreaders, it is a skill, and like any other skill, the more you practice it, the better you get.

What is lipreading?

Lipreading is when you watch a person’s face (not just their lips!) to figure out their figure out their speech patterns, movements, gestures and expressions.

For deaf people, lipreading is an important tool in everyday life and communication, helping to make conversations easier to understand. But lipreading isn’t simply for those with hearing loss, it’s something we all do, even if it goes unnoticed.

If you find yourself in a crowded room, you will automatically watch a person’s lips are they’re talking, making it easier for yourself to follow what’s being said.

Myths about lipreading

Some people think that if you can read lips, you’re basically a secret agent whom no one can keep anything from.

Unfortunately, this isn’t anywhere near close to the truth. It is estimated that only 30% to 40% of speech sounds can be lip-read even under the best conditions and extra information is usually required to understand what is being said.

So while it is an important skill, it’s not a replacement for hearing aids or looking after your hearing in the first place!

Benefits of lipreading

Not being able to understand what’s being said isn’t a pleasant experience, often leading to frustration, isolation and depression.

Lipreading can alleviate a lot of that by opening up communication again by understanding what’s being said. Lipreading can help build confidence and develop social skills, especially in children.

Learning to lipread can mean the difference between staying connected with the world and slowly isolating yourself from it. Lipreading is a path to maintaining a connection with friends, family and loved ones, and actively being a part of society without feeling disconnected and withdrawn.

If you would like to lean to lipread, there are online courses you can take, including this one from lipreading.org.

We can help with lipreading

121 Captions founder and Managing Director Tina Lannin is the UK’s foremost lip reader.

Having worked with many famous names such as the BBC, Al-Jazeera, and Disney, plus national newspapers and government agencies, Tina has provided training courses and talks at conferences across the Middle East and in the UK on captioning, lip-reading, and communication solutions for deaf people.

As a forensic lip reader, Tina has been hired for such prestigious events as the Royal Wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for Sky News and the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for the BBC.

If you need someone to lipread, then you’ve found the best in the business. Contact us today for more information.