Lip-reading

The practice of understanding speech by visually interpreting the movements of the lips, face, and tongue, often used by deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals as a communication strategy. Lip-reading relies on watching the mouth region and facial expressions to decode spoken language, though it is inherently limited since many speech sounds look identical on the lips. Eye-tracking research shows that DHH individuals tend to keep their focus on the eyes while monitoring mouth movements in peripheral vision, whereas hearing individuals focus directly on the mouth when lip-reading.