While, for the right reasons,
lip reading can be a crucial skill to develop, we must also recognize its limitations.
Even the most gifted lip readers are only able to distinguish about 30-45% of the words being used at any given time. They can only fully understand a conversation or discussion by supplementing what they have visually interpreted with context, body language, and other non-verbal cues.

Nevertheless, lip reading, or
speech reading, is an effective tool to learn and its limitations can be reduced by being aware of the surroundings, including:
- The physical environment—there must be enough light.
- Proximity—the person must be close enough and facing in the direction of the lip reader with their head up looking directly at the person.
- Limited distraction—it is most beneficial to have one-on-one contact or only a small group of people when communicating to limit distraction for everyone.
With easy access to on-demand education through the internet, many hearing-capable people are learning to lip read as well. Often these are people wanting to support a loved one who is
hearing impaired or feel it will be valuable in meetings or social situations where hearing every word is difficult.
Unfortunately, on the downside, we often hear about people who exploit this skill in an underhanded way, i.e., sports teams using
bad lip reading to gain an unfair advantage with their opposing team’s plans.