HELEN KELLER

                                                                 1883 - 1968
                   http://www.hki.org/our-impact/about-us/helen-kellers-legacy#.WwF93UgvwdU
Helen Keller became blind and deaf at the age of two as a result of a severe illness. She overcame her handicaps to earn a College education, and she spent her life championing for the rights of those with physical handicaps.

Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27th,1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green. Helen had two siblings, Mildred Campbell and Philip Brooks Keller, and two older half-brothers from her father's prior marriage, James and William Simpson Keller.
(All information is from Wikipedia)
At 19 months old Helen contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain," which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness left her both deaf and blind. At that time, she was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, the 6 year old daughter of the cook, who understood her signs; by the age of seven, Helen had more than 60 home signs to communicate with her family. Even though blind and deaf, Helen had passed through many obstacles and she learned to live with her disabilities. She learned how to tell which person was walking from the vibrations of their footsteps.

After seeing several doctors, Helen finally made friends with Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired, who eventually became her governess and companion. Their friendship lasted for 49 years.
Anne Sullivan arrived at Keller's house in March 1887, and immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had brought Helen as a present. Helen's breakthrough in communication came the next month, when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water", Helen then nearly exhausted Anne by demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world.

Helen was viewed as isolated, but was very in touch with the outside world. She was able to enjoy music by feeling the beat and she was able to have a strong connection with animals through touch. She was delayed at picking up language, but that did not stop her from having a voice.
After going through formal education in special schools, in 1904, at the age of 24, Helen graduated from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Determined to communicate with others as conventially as possible, Helen learned to speak, and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures on aspects of her life. She learned to "hear" people's speech by reading their lips with her hands --- her sense of touch had heightened. Helen became proficient at using Braille and reading sign language with her hands as well.

Helen is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities and travelled to 25 different countries giving motivational speeches about deaf people's conditions. Helen was a suffragette, pacifist, radical socialist and birth control supporter. In 1915, Helen and George A. Kessler founded the Helen Keller International organization which is devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition.
In 1961, Helen suffered a series of strokes and spent the last years of her life at home. Helen devoted much of her later life  to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind.
Helen died in her sleep on 1st June,1968.
Helen was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971.