Helen Keller was born on 27 June 1880 in Alabama, the daughter of a newspaper editor. Before her illness she was a lively and healthy child with a friendly personality. She could walk and even say a few simple words. The fever cut her off from the outside world, depriving her of sight and sound. It was as if she had been thrown into a dark prison cell from which there could be no release. Luckily Helen was not someone who gave up easily. 

Soon she began to explore the world by using her other senses. She followed her mother wherever she went, hanging onto her skirts. She touched and smelled everything she came across and felt other people's hands to see what they were doing. She copied their actions and was soon able to do certain jobs herself, like milking the cows or kneading dough. She even learned to recognize people by feeling their faces or their clothes. She could also tell where she was in the garden by the smell of the different plants and the feel of the ground under her feet.

By the age of seven she had invented over 60 different signs by which she could talk to her family. If she wanted bread for example, she would pretend to cut a loaf and butter the slices. If she wanted ice cream she wrapped her arms around herself and pretended to shiver.

Helen was unusual in that she was extremely intelligent and also remarkably sensitive. By her own efforts she had managed to make some sense of an alien and confusing world. But even she had limitations.

At the age of five Helen began to realize she was different from other people. She noticed that her family did not use signs like she did but talked with their mouths. Sometimes she stood between two people and touched their lips. She could not understand what they said and she could not make any meaningful sounds herself. She wanted to talk but no matter how she tried she could not make herself understood. This made her so angry that she used to hurl herself around the room, kicking and screaming in frustration.

As she got older her frustration grew and her rages became worse and worse. She became wild and unruly. If she didn't get what she wanted she would throw tantrums until her family gave in. Her favorite tricks included grabbing other people's food from their plates and hurling fragile objects to the floor. Once she even managed to lock her mother into the pantry. Eventually it became clear that something had to be done. So,  just before her seventh birthday,  the family hired a private tutor.

Anne Sullivan came from a background of extreme misery and poverty. She had lost her own sight when she was five and had been thrown into the poor house when her family broke up. Eventually she was lucky enough to get a place at the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston.

Here she earned the nickname 'Spitfire' because of her rudeness and bad behavior. Fortunately the director realized that if she could learn to behave she would be one of his most talented pupils. After several years, and two successful operations to restore her sight, she graduated with honors. It was clear to the director that this was the person to tame Helen Keller. Anne soon realized the cause of Helen's tantrums. She knew that if she could teach her to communicate she would become a different person. Even so, before she could teach this wild child, she had to control her. When she tried to get Helen to do something she didn't like Helen would scream and kick and bite. Anne eventually won these battles by sheer will power and persistence.

The next breakthrough came when Anne decided to teach Helen the manual alphabet. This is a sign language in which each letter is signed onto the hand of the deaf-blind person so that he or she can feel it. Each letter has a separate sign. This means that words and sentences can be spelled. It also means that complex ideas can be expressed.

Anne led Helen to the water-pump and pumped water onto her hand. As she did so she spelt out the individual letters, W A TE R. She did this again and again. Suddenly Helen realized that the individual signs represented the letters that made up the word Water. In the same instant she also realized that everything else in the world must have a name. She rushed about touching anything she could find and asking Anne what it was called.

Anne continued to teach Helen in this way for the next few years. She talked to her about all the things that were happening around them. She spelled everything into her hand using complete sentences rather than single words. In this way Helen gained a great deal of information in the same way that a hearing child does. By doing this, Anne was equipping her pupil with the words and the ideas she would need when she was ready to talk.

Anne was careful to teach Helen about those subjects in which she was interested. The two of them would wander through the fields discussing whatever ideas came into Helen's mind. In this way Anne managed to keep Helen intensely interested in a wide range of subjects. It also meant that they could pursue a number of exciting hobbies, such as sailing and tobogganing.

As a result Helen became gentler and she soon learnt to read and write in Braille. She also learned to read people's lips by pressing her fingertips against them and feeling the movement and vibrations. This method is called Tadoma and it is a skill that very, very few people manage to acquire. She also learned to speak, a major achievement for someone who could not hear at all.

Eventually Anne decided that Helen needed more formal instruction if she was to achieve her ambition of going to college. In 1888 they both went to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. Here Anne continued to teach Helen with the equipment and books provided by the school. Then in 1894 they went to the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York. Anne attended the lessons with Helen and acted as her interpreter. She tapped out what the teachers said into Helen's hand and transcribed book after book into Braille.

Helen proved to be a remarkable scholar, graduating with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904. She had phenomenal powers of concentration and memory, as well as a dogged determination to succeed. While she was still at college she wrote' The Story of My Life'. This was an immediate success and earned her enough money to buy her own house.

Helen was very religious and her faith led her to examine the world more and more carefully. She began to realize that there was great injustice in the world and that people were not treated equally. Blindness was often caused by disease which was itself often caused by poverty. She became a suffragette and a socialist, demanding equal rights for women and better pay for working class people. She also helped set up the American Foundation for the Blind in order to provide better services to people with impaired vision.


She toured the country, giving lecture after lecture. Many books were written about her and several plays and films were made about her life. Eventually she became so famous that she was invited abroad and received many honors from foreign universities and monarchs. In 1932 she became a vice-president of the Royal National Institute for the Blind in the United
Kingdom. After her death in 1968 an organization was set up in her name to combat blindness in the developing world. Today that agency, Helen Keller International, is one of the biggest organizations working with blind people overseas.

It is important to remember that without the help of others Helen Keller would never have succeeded as she did. She relied a great deal on Anne Sullivan, who accompanied her everywhere for almost fifty years. Without her faithful teacher Helen would probably have remained trapped within an isolated and confused world.

Even so, there is no doubt that Helen Keller was quite remarkable. She was extremely intelligent, sensitive and determined. She was certainly the first deaf-blind person to make such a public success of her life. But she is not the only person with a hearing and sight impairment to succeed. She is simply the best known.

Perhaps her biggest success was in persuading others that disability is not the end of the world. One Japanese lady said of her,

'For many generations, more than we can count, we bowed our heads and submitted to blindness and beggary. This blind and deaf woman lifts her head high and teaches us to win our way by work and laughter. She brings light and hope to the heart'.