Imagine waking up one day to utter emptiness. A world devoid of light and sound. A frightening thought, and precisely what happened to Helen Keller.

But being disabled does not mean a life of no achievements, and Helen’s story exemplifies this.

Born a healthy baby on June 27, 1880, in Alabama, Helen was the daughter of Arthur and Kate Keller.

Even in her infancy, Helen was a quick learner, speaking her first words when she was six months old and learning to walk when she was one.

But when she was 19 months old, she fell ill with what historians now believe to be scarlet fever or meningitis.

She was spared, but the illness robbed her of her sight and her hearing.

Later, in adulthood, Helen would remember, “When I awoke and found that all was dark and still, I suppose I thought it was night, and I must have wondered why day was so long coming. Gradually, I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been day.”

After her illness, Helen was helpless and depended solely on her mother’s care, though she learnt to explore the world with her hands. She developed a system of communication at this time, using charades to indicate what she wanted.

Helen was a determined and stubborn child, who deeply wanted to communicate with others. Her inability to do so, and everyone’s inability to understand her, left her frustrated, leading to violent temper tantrums that frightened her family.

Told by relatives to institutionalise her, Kate decided to take her to a doctor instead, and this doctor recommended she consult another famous and historical figure.

Alexander Graham Bell, apart from being the inventor of the telephone, was also deeply involved in assisting the hearing-impaired. Bell sat Helen on his knee and gave her his pocket watch, and she was elated when she could feel the vibrations of the mechanism.

He suggested her parents request a tutor from a specialised school for the blind in Boston, and it was from there that a partially blind teacher named Anne Sullivan was dispatched to Alabama.

A pleasant woman, Sullivan was a firm teacher and she refused to let Helen’s tantrums disturb her, no matter how violent they got.

She managed to rein the girl in, and she began to teach Helen words by spelling them out on her palm.

At first, Helen could not understand what these words meant, but a breakthrough came in 1887, when Sullivan spelt out “water” while running Helen’s hand under a tap.

Helen later remembered that day, “That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free.”

As she learnt more about the world around her, her tantrums subsided.

She would learn to read books in Braille, expanding her literary knowledge. Helen would later learn to speak, taught by Sarah Fuller, who placed Helen’s hand over her mouth to let Helen feel her lip and tongue movements.

Her first spoken words were, “It is too warm.” She would learn to “listen” by placing her hands on a speaker’s throat and lips to feel the vibrations of their vocal cords.

A report Sullivan sent to her school about Helen was published and, at the age of 10, Helen became a renowned world figure.

In her first foray as an 11-year-old author, Helen was accused of plagiarism, and it deeply affected her.

She eventually began a formal education, studying alongside able-bodied classmates, and she performed especially well in English. At her lecturer’s suggestion, she wrote an autobiography that would become a bestseller.

On June 28, 1904, she became the first disabled person to earn an undergraduate degree from Harvard’s Radcliffe College. She would go on to travel the world, delivering lectures on her life experiences.

Helen also had strong progressive inclinations, fighting for civil liberties, protections for the disabled and supporting labour unions.

During World War II, she went out to encourage soldiers who had lost their sight or hearing in battle. For her service and her story, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, the highest award an American civilian can receive.

In 1968, the amazing life of Helen Keller drew to a close and she died at the age of 87, after suffering a heart attack.

During this International Week of the Deaf, we salute Helen and all women like her, who stood tall in the face of adversity and contributed to humankind in ways both big and small.