This can be thought of enhanced lip-reading -- signs are made around
the face to provide additional information about the phoneme being
uttered. It must be pointed out that lip-reading is usually not
considered a practical means of communication -- typically, a person
who is lip-reading is only recognising 30 per cent of the words being
uttered.
. For example,
b and p cannot be told apart -- and thus ``cued
speech'' indicates which phoneme is being uttered.
Typically, it is only used as a teaching aid and is not used widely in the Deaf community.