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 learnt 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.

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

• a person who identifies with Deaf culture.

See also

• List of notable deaf people
• Models of deafness
• Hearing impairment