I had an employee for four years that was deaf. Deafness came for him at an early age due to a very advanced infection - I don't recall, but, perhaps Spinal Meningitis. Possibly able to get the cochlear implant, but, doctors gave it a very low chance for success. It was thought he would never walk, he never went to a special school. He could read lips well and could verbalize some things.

As an employer, it wasn't too bad. He telecommuted, so, most conversations were over ICQ. However, at times dealing through Florida Relay was troublesome. He did go to Linux and PHP user groups from time to time, but, mostly to meet people for contact later. He was a T9 SMS rocket. At times, communicating very complex thoughts when we were face to face ended up with me typing in a terminal window or writing on a legal pad. We didn't meet face to face frequently, and I did learn some ASL - only to find out that he didn't know ASL. He got into his late 30s-early 40s without ever using ASL and it didn't seem to bother him.

Interviewing him face to face was a little difficult, but, I brought pen and paper as I had dealt with deaf clients in the past while consulting. I had a prepared offer letter with me - just needed to fill in the amount.

We communicated quite a bit over ICQ about non work-related issues and he never really seemed to want to change much. He just wanted to work in a small office or out of his home, collect a paycheck, play xbox/ps3 and that was that.

So, the fact that you want to do something puts you a step ahead in the game. Many people, deaf or not, don't like groups. In fact, I would bet a large proportion of the readers here resist groups except with very like-minded people. I think ambition outweighs shyness. The desire to succeed will push you to do things that you might feel are initially uncomfortable, but, after a while, you'll adapt.

To make an idea a reality, it should be no different between us. You need to design your MVP (Minimum Viable Product), potentially code it, get people interested and using it. On the Internet, most communication with clients isn't verbal. Working in a pairs environment or finding a partner that will work with you might be a little more challenging, but, I would suspect you should really have that much difficulty. I know plenty of people that intensely dislike talking on the phone and prefer instant messaging, email, IRC, etc.

At the point it comes time to pitch your idea to get further funding, you will probably hit a roadblock that will be much more difficult. With Florida Relay, it was very difficult to detect passion - and by passion I mean the belief in an idea, the excitement of discovering a new solution, etc. Investors use verbal cues to detect how well you understand an idea or how well you'll be able to adapt to change or how much you believe in the idea. A translator just might not convey that as well which means your idea probably needs to be more technically sophisticated, documented, or thought out.

I don't really think you'll run into too many issues that any other reader here isn't going to encounter. Get your idea together, write a skeleton document, figure out what it takes to get from point A to B, develop an MVP yourself or with someone else, launch it, figure out where to go from there.