How do deaf people learn to read lips and talk?
It is true that some deaf people can read lips, but lipreading is not an adequate substitute for hearing [1]. Only 15% of the English language appears on the lips, so lip reading is essentially a guessing game [1]. It takes time and practice to learn lipreading, and many people who are deaf excel in life without being able to read lips at all [2]. They communicate primarily with sign languages, either with other signers or with help of interpreters, which is easier and more reliable than lip reading [2].
People who are deaf or hard of hearing may learn to read lips and talk in order to communicate with the hearing world around them [1, 2, 3]. People who are deaf from birth or childhood learn to read lips and talk as a way to communicate, and people who become deaf later in life may also learn to do so in order to regain the ability to communicate with others [1, 2, 3, 4]. Cochlear implants can also help deaf people comprehend speech, as they pick up sound and send it to an internal system that transmits signals to the brain [2]. Context interpretation, facial cues, and lip-reading help people who are deaf comprehend more than 95 percent of speech in a quiet situation [2]. Learning to speak is typically difficult for a person born deaf or became deaf at a young age, and people who become deaf later in life may be able to regain their speech and language skills with appropriate training [4].