Diane Schuur with David Jackson

She altered our perception of the disabled and remapped the boundaries of sight and sense.

Helen Keller was less than two years old when she came down with a fever. It struck dramatically and left her unconscious. The fever went just as suddenly. But she was blinded and, very soon after, deaf. As she grew up, she managed to learn to do tiny errands, but she also realised that she was missing something. “Sometimes,” she later wrote, “I stood between two persons who were conversing and touched their lips. I could not understand, and was vexed. I moved my lips and gesticulated frantically without result. This made me so angry at times that I kicked and screamed until I was exhausted.” She was a wild child.

I can understand her rage. I was born two months prematurely and was placed in an incubator. The practice at the time was to pump a large amount of oxygen into the incubator, something doctors have since learned to be extremely cautious about. But as a result, I lost my sight. I was sent to a state school for the blind, but I flunked first grade because Braille just didn’t make any sense to me.

Words were a weird concept. I remember being hit and slapped. And you act all that in. All rage is anger that is acted in, bottled in for so long that it just pops out. Helen had it harder. She was both blind and deaf. But, oh, the transformation that came over her when she discovered that words were related to things! It’s like the lyrics of that song: “On a clear day, rise and look around you, and you’ll see who you are.” As miraculous as learning language may seem, that achievement of Keller’s belongs to the 19th century. It was also a co-production with her patient and persevering teacher, Anne Sullivan. Helen Keller’s greater achievement came after Sullivan, her companion and protector, died in 1936. Keller would live 32 more years and in that time would prove that the disabled can be independent. Those people whose only experience of her is ‘The Miracle Worker’ will be surprised to discover her many dimensions. “My work for the blind,” she wrote, “has never occupied a centre in my personality. My sympathies are with all who struggle for justice.” She was a tireless activist for racial equality. She was our first star. And I am very grateful to her.