Deaf Individual

A deaf individual, or deaf person, may mean:

• a pre-lingually deaf person, someone who is deaf at birth or became deaf in infancy before acquiring mastery of a spoken language, will often have sign language as a first language, and may be part of the Deaf community. He or she may have learned some degree of speech communication, such as lip reading -- see Deaf education.
• a post-lingually deaf person
• a late deafened adult, may be hard of hearing and/or have a progressive hearing loss.

Deaf, a Deaf individual, or a Deaf person, (capitalized) may mean:

• a person who identifies with Deaf culture.