Q: What is the most effective way
to communicate with you if the person doesn’t know
sign language?
A: I find that people who try to sign are the easiest to lipread as well. I am a superior lipreader and I find it very difficult, i.e. tiring, even if it is successful. The effort people make to gesture, sign, fingerspell a key word here and there, perhaps jot a key word on paper, all helps lipreading a lot, but it still makes the exercise 99% my chore.
I find that I lipread holistically, not word by word (if you want to understand the concepts of the sentence and not just word word word) so sometimes you have to just let the sentence flow in and take shape. (It’s the same with understanding sign language, possibly any language reception.) Unfortunately, if you’re taking it in and waiting for it to take shape and make sense and it doesn’t, the person is still talking and you don't know how to explain where your understanding dropped off. That is where the exasperation comes in. People think you should be able to put your hand up immediately when word X isn’t recognized. In reality, it’s a process of “hey, it's been two minutes since I understood what this conversation is about.”
The old advice about rephrasing rather than repeating is helpful. Sometimes I didn’t “get” it because it was simply inaudible in the particular background conditions and so on, but a different combination of words would not get washed out that way. Things like names and numbers are nearly impossible to lipread so writing these is very important if understanding them is important.
Whether it bothers me or not, that I am making 99% of the effort, depends on the situation. You know, just because I’m the one who became deaf doesn’t mean I should get all the extra work. I didn’t do it on purpose, after all, and I’m the one who has to deal with all the other hardships as well, while the hearing people don’t have those. Sure, they say, they have their problems too. But becoming deaf did not give me immunity to the other problems in life. I’m deaf on top of those. But life isn’t fair, and people really don’t think about that. If it is a professional relationship or one that fulfills other fundamental needs for me, then I can make a lot of allowances. If it is someone who wants something from me, e.g. selling me goods, providing a service that I am paying for, wants me to do something for nothing (committee work, etc.) then I expect them to take on more of the burden. There are lots of other opportunities for me to spend my money and volunteer time than places that make me jump through hoops to do it.
My atttitude and effort have a little to do with how effective lipreading can be, although not as much as simple facts, that they estimate that English is only 30% visible on the lips, and many people have accents, facial hair or behaviours (chewing, smiling/grinning, hands on face, looking away, etc etc) that reduce it further, and that environments can also deteriorate the potential (noisy environments wash out the vowel sounds that can help cue me to the syllables, backlighting washes out the person’s face, people can be just too far away to see clearly, etc.)
I also recognize that a lot of talking occurs to foster relationships rather than to impart information, and sometimes just sitting there looking content and attentive does as much or more for the relationship as nagging people to repeat every little bit so that I understand every single unimportant detail. I have to start by identifying which type of situation it is.
The short answer to this question is, if people want to communicate with me most effectively and do not know how to sign, is that they should learn. But I am not so naive as to think most people are seeking the most effective method to communicate with me, they are seeking a method which uses the least effort on their part while achieving at least some minimum essential level of communication.
