Through meningitis Helen Keller as a young child lost vision and hearing. Finger Braille alphabet and freed them from the dark stillness. 

Helen Keller was on 27 June 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama, as a healthy baby. With less than two years ago she fell ill with meningitis. After her parents when the symptoms had subsided, were considered that their child was fully recovered, they found a short time later that Helen could not see and hear. The few words that the child was able to say at this point already forgot about it after a short time. 

As Helen grew older, she developed a series of characters, and to make understood their environment. If they did not understand, had the violent scenes for the episode. The girl uttered unintelligible sounds, struggled, threw on the floor and raged until it was exhausted. The situation worsened when Helen got a little sister and share the attention of the mother had. By chance she discovered also that the people around them, apparently with the help of her lips could communicate with each other what their frustration grew stronger.

Against this background turned to Kate and Arthur H. Keller to the ophthalmologist, Dr. Chisholm, who had already healed some blind people. For Helen, he could do nothing, but gave the parents the Council to consult with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. This in turn pointed to Michael Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. 

Helen's mother had already read something in Charles Dickens' "American Sketches" about the institute and its then already deceased director Samuel Gridley Howe. This had freed some years before Laura Bridgman, the deaf-blind manual alphabet, and with the help of High writing out of isolation. 

Helen's parents refused to give their daughter in the institution. Anagnos therefore suggested that the 20-year-old teacher Anne Sullivan, the child should be informed and educated in his home. In the spring of 1887 Sullivan met - who themselves suffered since childhood from a low vision - Ivy Green, the house of the basement, one and immediately started their work. 

Sullivan gave Helen a doll and spelled the word into it using the finger alphabet in her hand. After the girl had realized after some time, finally, that each thing has a name on it stopped using its previous mark. 

Another part of the curriculum was good manners, because Helen had until then eats, among other things with his fingers and can operate off the plates of the other family members. 

After Helen had realized that there was a way for them to communicate with their fellow man, her curiosity grew steadily. Sullivan taught her to read and then used to begin the so-called High writing. Next, Sullivan teaches Helen the square and finally the Braille. With a Braille stylus Helen could now write and then read what she had previously written. Later, Helen studied at the Horace Mann School for the deaf, even the basics of speech and of the Wright-Humanson School in New York, the lip by touching with the fingers. 

After Helen had first visited for a while, the Cambridge School for Young Ladies; she then prepared Sullivan, together with a tutor at the Radcliffe College. She started there in 1900 studying foreign languages and history. You, however, specialty was English Literature. In 1904 she was her graduation cum laude. Regardless of their disability during their training had taken no one. 

Even as a young girl, Helen had started to write her life story and keep a diary. The acquaintance with some publishers and writers like Mark Twain, as well as their studies and are constantly expanding their horizons through their teacher finally had the consequence that Helen was a writer and wrote in books like "My way out of the dark" about themselves and their world. 

Helen Keller's early years were made into films including the year 1962 with Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller. In a later adaptation Patty Duke then took over the role of the teacher. 

Helen Keller suffered a stroke in 1961 and retired after withdrawing from the public. She died on 1 June 1968 in Easton, Connecticut.