Mitchell, James Erold

Born both deaf and blind in Ardelach, Nairnshire, Scotland. May be the first deaf-blind person in history known by name, and may also have been the first deaf-blind person to communicate primarily through the use of (home) signs. At age 14, an operation to remove cataracts gave him a small amount of sight. Never educated, he wandered around his village for the rest of his life. The contemporary Scottish philospher Dugald Stewart wrote about him in "An Account of a Boy Born Blind and Deaf".