Deafblindness is a combination of sight and hearing loss that affects a person’s ability to communicate, to access information, and to get around.
Deafblindness is not simply deafness plus blindness, rather it is a separate and unique disability. While a person who has either a sight or a hearing impairment will use the unaffected sense to compensate for the loss of the other, a person who is deafblind has insufficient sight or hearing to do this.
A person does not have to be totally deaf and totally blind to be considered deafblind – in fact, many people who are deafblind have some residual vision and/or hearing.