English Audio Request

Helen Keller was born on June 27th 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She was a healthy baby, but at nineteen months old, she fell ill and nearly died. When she recovered, she was blind and deaf, and therefore also dumb. She was obviously very intelligent, and explored the world using her other senses. She could recognize people by touching their faces and make herself understood by using gestures and mime.

However, as she grew older, she became more and more frustrated and uncontrollable. In 1887, twenty-year-old Anne Sullivan, a tutor, arrived to help them. Helen was seven and a miracle was about to happen. Anne started to teach Helen how to communicate, spelling words into her hand. But Helen did not understand and was very frustrated. One day, she suddenly understood the meaning of “water”, and a world of words opened up to her.

Helen Keller learnt both Braille and the deaf blind alphabet, and also how to read people’s lips by pressing her fingertips against them. Although she also tried to learn how to speak, she was never quite understandable and Anne always had to translate what she said. Despite all her handicaps, she was an exceptional student. In 1900, she was accepted at one of America’s best universities where she studied Latin, Greek and modern languages.

By the age of 23, Helen had already written her first book: The Story Of My Life, which was an immediate success and made her famous. She later wrote eleven other books. After college, with her companion Anne, she began travelling around the USA and Europe, often to raise money for the American Foundation for the Blind.

Throughout her life she campaigned for deaf-blind people and demonstrated her lip-reading techniques to celebrities such as King George V (Queen Elizabeth II’s grandfather) and the President of the United States. In 1964, four years before her death, Helen received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.