Deaf-blind Awareness Week
Here comes the week from 21st June to 27th June. It is a Deaf-blind Awareness Week to mark the commemorated every year on her birthday, 27th June. It is a day to remember her achievements in life and her resilience when overcoming challenges.
Image description: Helen Keller with her eyes close as her face looked if she is thinking, wishful appearance on the left side. On the right side, the words read out, ‘The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Helen Keller. (Quote)
The theme is Deaf-blind and thriving, and in Australia, their theme is Deaf-blind Proud.
There are approximately 15 to155 millions of people on our earth: experience combined hearing and vision impairments. Today there are consists of 75 national and associated member organisations from 62 different countries from all corners of the world. The central largest organisation is called the World Federation of the Deaf-blind, and it established in 2001. Their partnerships are The World Blind Union (WBU), The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD), Deafblind International (DbI), and The World Association of Sign Language Interpreters (WASLI). These organisations are global non-governmental advocacy and for people with deafblindness, as well, Deaf people, people with disabilities on the earth.
Every year, many Deaf-blind people, their families, support workers, and the organisations celebrate the Deaf-blind Awareness Week and the special day of Helen Keller’s birthday – 27th June.
What is so special about Helen Keller in the United States? When Helen was young, she felt trapped in the dark and no hearing of sounds at all. She struggled to touch, to feel even no sense of day or night, not knowing who in the same room as her. Of course, strangers would think of her as a difficult child or a mad child. These strangers had no experience to witness or to behaved like Helen when they were child/ren because they do not realise she was a deaf-blind child where there was no resource in the old days. Yes, there was a school for the Deaf-blind along with the Deaf School.
Helen found a way to break the mould and proved that no disability could prevent a person from living their best life. Helen continued her ways – became an author, a lecture, the first Deaf-blind woman to gain a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Here is a video clip – Helen Keller with Anne Sullivan – subtitles
Have we forgotten the other person? What about Laura Bridgman? Laura Bridgman received the proper education at Perkins Institution for the Blind under Samuel Gridley Howe, fifty years before Helen Keller. 
Laura Bridgman and her life – subtitles
Charles Dickens visited Laura at the Institution in January 1842, and Charles wrote the article about Laura and Samuel Howe in the American Notes – a quote show here.
Her social feelings, and her affections, are very strong; and when she is sitting at work, or by the side of one of her little friends, she will break off from her task every few moments, to hug and kiss them with an earnestness and warmth that is touching to behold. When left alone, she occupies and apparently amuses herself, and seems quite content; and so strong seems to be the natural tendency of thought to put on the garb of language, that she often soliloquizes in the finger language, slow and tedious as it is. But it is only when alone, that she is quiet; for if she becomes sensible of the presence of any one near her, she is restless until she can sit close beside them, hold their hand, and converse with them by sign. Dickens, Charles. American Notes. Cambridge: CSP Classic Texts, 2008, p. 32
Laura’s life reached the highest fame when many people read Charles Dickens’s article and visited Laura and Howe at the Perkins every Saturday. Then the staff became concerned with Laura becoming more popular than any other student at the Perkins Institution in the late 1840s-1850. Laura’s life became relatively obscurity, uneventful life, and she spent her time inside Perkins and her family’s farm by doing sewing, reading books in Braille, and assisting young students in the sewing class. In 1850, Laura returned to her family’s home on a farm, but the family did not spend a lot of time or patience with Laura. Laura’s health declined, and one of her friends and Howe brought her back to Perkins, where they arranged a small house – ‘Sunny Home’ for Laura. Dorothea Dix – one of her best friends who was an advocator and Howe arranged an endowment of a home – Sunny Home for the rest of her life. Laura died at the age of fifty-nine years old, and she leads a comfortable life.
What do these two ladies have in common? Laura became famous when she was young and entered the college – Perkins Institution for the Blind as an example of education of a deaf-blind youth. Helen’s mother – Kate Keller read Dickens’s account in the American Notes, and Kate got the inspired to seek for advice on getting a teacher for her daughter Helen. The teacher was Anne Sullivan – a former pupil at the same college where Laura was living there.
Nevertheless, Hele Keller was a groundbreaking advocate for the rights of ALL people with disabilities, including Deaf-blind people around the world. Helen travelled widely to around the world with Anne Sullivan, later Polly Thompson – thirty five countries from 1946 to 1957.In July, 1948, Helen and Polly visited Auckland and Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf by the Royal New Zealand Blind Foundation where there are two Deaf schools; in Sumner – ‘Van Asch Deaf Education Centre’ and in Kelston, Auckland ‘Kelston Deaf Education Centre. The deaf blogger remember one lady who came from Christchurch and her name was Patty Still. Patty met Helen and Polly there along with many other Deaf students and their families.
