My wife, June Dixon-Millar, who has died aged 81, led the use in Britain of Cued Speech, a communication tool that is easy to learn and enhances the accuracy of lip-reading. Trained as a primary school teacher and specialising in the teaching of deaf children, from 1957 she taught in Fulham, west London. In 1970 she was approached by the campaigner Winifred Tumim, who had heard about Cued Speech and had brought back from the US a British adaptation, which she asked June to use with one of her two deaf daughters. June tried it and immediately saw this as a breakthrough in communication with hearing-impaired people.
Cued Speech is not a sign language: the “cues”, which are hand-shapes placed in different positions near the mouth, remove the ambiguity which occurs when lip-reading alone is used. The method can be learned in 20 hours: practice enables cuers to cue whatever is said in the real time of speech, thus giving deaf and hearing-impaired people access to all the richness of the English language. It has been adapted into 65 languages, so hearing-impaired people all over the world can gain similar benefits.
June successfully taught Winifred’s daughter and two other children, and in 1975 founded the National Centre for Cued Speech (now the Cued Speech Association UK) with support from the charity Kids. In 1978 the NCCS became independent and June as director did most of the teaching and promoting and all of the fundraising.
She travelled to all parts of the UK and often played a part in developing the use of Cued Speech in other countries. She retired in 1999 but continued to work and teach voluntarily for the association until her death. In 2006 the American Cued Speech association presented June with a lifetime membership award “for her enduring legacy and lifetime commitment”.
Born in Leicester, she was the daughter of Harry Shuter, a window cleaner, and his wife, Elsie, who did not survive June’s birth. June was adopted by Evelyn (nee Ball), a singer, and Alfred Hunt. They spent the war years in Trinidad where Alfred was working for Shell and returned to Britain in 1945. June was first privately educated and later went to Mayfield comprehensive school in Putney, south-west London. She trained as a teacher at Homerton College, Cambridge and at Manchester University.
In 1960 she married the architectural historian Roger Dixon, whom she met as worshippers at the same church. They had three sons. Roger died in 1983.
I had been a close family friend for many years, and June and I married the following year. June moved to Canterbury, where I was teaching. In retirement, she enjoyed travel, reading, singing in a choir, painting, geology and Egyptology. Although deeply affected by the loss of her first husband, and later, the death from leukaemia of her youngest son, Matthew, June always showed enormous zest for life.
She is survived by me, by her sons, John and Paul, and four grandchildren, Thomas, Christopher, William and Elizabeth.
