Cued Language network of America!

Do you know what cued speech is? It is basically a visual system of communication used by those who are not so fortunate to communicate verbally (e.g. completely deaf and partially deaf individuals).

The Essense

It is not only adults, but even kids use cued language successfully, if trained properly. Cued speech is a gesture-based system which makes spoken languages easily imitated by using a relatively limited number of handshapes. It is these handshapes that are known as cues.

The Definition

According to the National Cued Speech Association cued speech is technically defined as “a visual mode of communication that uses hand shapes and placements in combination with the mouth movements and speech to make the phonemes of spoken language look different from each other.”

The different hand shapes may represent consonants and vowels so that any spoken language can be expressed visually. That really is cool, isn’t it. It’s not only the deaf and hard-to-hear individuals that can speak cued language; even others can learn this form of speech and use it to communicate with the less fortunate!