Give it to me in writing ahead of time and don't move while you say it.

I was looking around on the web today for some helpful suggestions on being deaf in a working environment (every little bit of additional info helps). Didn't find anything I didn't already know, but a comment by Beth Wilson, a hearing-impaired engineer for Raytheon corp, in this article made me smile:

"Lipreading is successful only if you have three things: the person never moves, you know all the words they're going to say, and the words are predictable."

She went on to describe a phenomenon that I thought only I, as a rank newbie, experienced:

"Everyone who depends on speechreading for help in communication knows that you can be understanding a person perfectly, and then suddenly like a switch you understand nothing. You miss a key word and as your brain tries frantically to figure it out, you can't make any sense of the rest."

So it's true even for experienced speechreaders. I guess that makes me feel better!

ronnie