Cued Speech is a visual system which allows a deaf person to differentiate the phonemes of a language which may otherwise be ambiguous with lip reading alone. In English, the 42 phonemes (/s/, /b/, /ch/, /e/, /r/, /n/, etc.) that combine to form over 600,000 words are represented with 8 hand shapes (consonants) and 5 placements around the face (vowels).

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Historically and statistically, literacy rates among deaf students were significantly lower than their hearing peers. In 1966, Dr. R. Orin Cornett, designed a visual system to replicate English phonemes so that deaf individuals could access the necessary building blocks to "sound out" words. There are now close to 60 languages with Cued Speech systems. Today, research has shown that deaf children raised with Cued Speech have equal reading levels to their hearing classmates.

It is imperative for a child to have an early, consistent, accurate language model in order to become fluent in any language. 90% of deaf children have hearing parents. Using their native spoken language, families can learn the "cues" in a matter of days and with a few months of practice, can be proficient enough to be a language model.

Cued Speech helps deaf children learn spoken language at the same rate as hearing children with equal exposure. Mastery of a spoken language by the age of 7 is essential for literacy. Reading levels are dependant on the child's ability to phonemically decode written language. Cued Speech was designed to give deaf/heard of hearing children the tools to naturally acquire phonemic decoding skills at the same rate as their hearing peers.