blind people background research

Helen Keller:

• Helen lost her vision and hearing in 1882.
• Helen met her life teacher in 1887.
• Helen wasn't abel to understand the meaning of words until the water bump on her hand. Her first understanding word was "water".
• Helen’s progress from then on was astonishing. Anne taught Helen to read, firstly with raised letters and later with braille, and to write with both ordinary and braille typewriters.
• Mary Swift Lamson who was to try and teach Helen to speak. This was something that Helen desperately wanted and although she learned to understand what somebody else was saying by touching their lips and throat, her efforts to speak herself proved at this stage to be unsuccessful. This was later attributed to the fact that Helen’s vocal chords were not properly trained prior to her being taught to speak.
• Helen entered Radcliffe College in 1900 and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904, becoming the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
• Helen’s first book “The Story of My Life” which was published in 1903.
• Helen Keller played a leading role in most of the significant political, social, and cultural movements of the 20th century. Throughout her lifetime (1880-1968) she worked unceasingly to improve the lives of people who were blind and deaf.
• The John Milton Society for the Blind was founded in 1928 by Helen Keller to develop an interdenominational ministry that would bring spiritual guidance.
  

IF Helen Keller were born today her life would undoubtedly would be completely different. Her life long dream was to be able to talk, something that she was never really able to master. Today the teaching methods exist that would have helped Helen to realise this dream. How technology that enables blind and deafblind people, like Helen, to communicate directly, and independently, with anybody in the world.

In Helen’s own words:

“The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realise, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself so that he can win light through work.”

John Milton
*An English Poet who lost his sight after he turned forty (1651), and was blind when he wrote his epic poem Paradise Lost, which reflects the inner soul's "Celestial Light" to "see and tell of things invisible to mortal sight."

References
The life of Helen Keller, http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_keller.hcsp

John Milton, http://www.satanic-kindred.org/milton.htm