Lipspeaking is the skill of conveying a speaker’s message in an accurate, clear and lipreadable way to deaf people who use spoken English as their first language.

Lipspeakers are trained to produce the shapes of words very clearly with and without voice using the flow, rhythm, and phrasing of natural speech. They relay the stress patterns of the speaker; use facial expression, natural gesture and fingerspelling (if requested) to aid the lipreader’s understanding. Messages, which are too fast for lipreading, may have to be pared down by the lipspeaker in order to make them more lipreadable.

Lipspeakers usually convey the speaker’s message silently and without voice. However, a lipspeaker may also, if asked, speak the words aloud, using clear communication techniques so that the lipreader can make use of their residual hearing.