1500s: Geronimo Cardano: Deaf people are capable of using their minds (IT)
Geronimo Cardano was the first physician to recognize the ability of the deaf to reason. He tried to teach his son using a set of symbols.
He said that deaf people were capable of using their minds, argued for the importance of teaching them, and was one of the first to state that deaf people could learn to read and write without learning how to speak first. He was familiar with a report by Rudolph Agricola about a deaf mute who had learned to write.