A variety of basic oral and facial features important for speech communication were arranged in order of decreasing visibility to form a functional vision screening test. A speaker with high-contrast facial features presented these stimuli to 40 adults with acquired low vision (aged 28-97 years). For many subjects, especially those with visual acuity ranging from about 20/80 to 20/500 (6/24 to 6/150), perception of oral/facial cues could not be predicted from the Snellen fraction.