The study explores the role of viseme visibility in lip - reading Chinese vowel recognition for the hearing - impaired Chinese students. The results show that the shapes of the lips play an important role in lip - reading Chinese vowel recognition. The correct identification rate of/a/Ji/,/e/ in the non - circular bilabials is significantly higher than/o/,/u/JU/ in the circular bilabials. The differences of the openings and the tongue's positions in the non - circular bilabials make almost no difference in identification, while significant dif...