Cued speech was invented in 1966 by R. Orin Cornett at Gallaudet College, Washington, D.C.[1] After discovering that children with prelingual and profound hearing impairments typically have poor reading comprehension, he developed the system with the aim of improving the reading abilities of such children through better comprehension of the phonemes of English.

At the time, some were arguing that deaf children were earning these lower marks because they had to learn two different systems: American Sign Language (ASL) for person-to-person communication and English for reading and writing.

[3] Since cued speech is based on making sounds visible to the hearing impaired, it is not limited to use in English-speaking nations.

[6][7] Literacy is the ability to read and write proficiently, which allows one to understand and communicate ideas so as to participate in a literate society.

Cued speech was designed to help eliminate the difficulties of English language acquisition and literacy development in children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

Results of research show that accurate and consistent cueing with a child can help in the development of language, communication and literacy but its importance and use is debated.

Cued speech does indeed achieve its goal of distinguishing phonemes received by the learner, but there is some question of whether it is as helpful to expression as it is to reception.

[9] The writers suggest additional and separate training to teach oral expression if such is desired, but more importantly this reflects the nature of cued speech; to adapt children who are deaf and hard-of-hearing to a hearing world, as such discontinuities of expression and reception are not as commonly found for children with a hearing loss who are learning sign language.

[9] In her paper "The Relationship Between Phonological Coding And Reading Achievement In Deaf Children: Is Cued Speech A Special Case?"

[11] The editor of the Cued Speech Journal (currently sought but not discovered) reports that "Research indicating that Cued Speech does greatly improve the reception of spoken language by profoundly deaf children was reported in 1979 by Gaye Nicholls, and in 1982 by Nicholls and Ling.