This can result in a deaf person becoming generally irritable. A deaf person has little to no hearing. A deaf person can dance, why not? She also became the first deaf person to achieve this honour. As a deaf person himself, Swinbourne was proud to create the soap's first deaf character. In 2000, he played a deaf person in "Summer Snow". In September of that year she was named Deaf Person of the Month by DeafPeople.com. The last deaf person born into the island's sign-language tradition, Katie West, died in 1952.