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_nalplytoday at 11:52 AM0 repliesview on HN

I am Deaf. I lipread German, but rarely lipread English and was successful with lipreading people speaking English as not their native language, namely Greek, Estonian and Marathi but never from the Anglophone world. Turning older, my lipreading competence declines, and I prefer talking in my local Signed Language.

What this article is missing, I think, is that lipreading is not replacing auditory input with visual input because there are too many, let's just call them homophones. I find the word "visemes" a bit too cute. You need a lot of context. So I always struggle if someone asks me a very short question, because I don't know what it's about. Someone comes to me, says hello, and asks the question, and I don't have an idea what they want to know.

Re gameplays, the context is special, because you can assume that the football coach is not shouting "HAKUNA MATATA" over the field. This simplifies lipreading during gameplays. Essentially it devolves into something like a set of radio buttons.