Can I stop sending read notifications to a specific contact?

I found an article here (from outside the Apple realm) that lays out steps to turn off "read" receipts in Messages for specific contacts. The opening paragraph reads—

Read receipts let a contact know that you've read their message. If you don't like this feature, you can disable it completely on all renditions of Apple Messages; you can also disable it for specific contacts.

This well–illustrated article was published in May 2021, so it's not really old. I went through the steps with my wife's iPhone XR, but the instructions don't track with what I see. I've searched through the Community for help, but I don't see anything. That someone took the trouble to show how to do what I want to do tells me that this feature must have existed once upon a time. Was this possible with older phones? With older versions of iOS ... ? But not now ... ? If not now, why?

It seems I can turn ALL read receipts off/on, but not for specific, individual contacts. Am I reading that right, or have I overlooked something?