her story in school for decades, she did so many remarkable things and was a true hero to the disabled community. But unfortunately, Tik Tok ableism has striked again because of a few people who couldn’t take the time (or the five minute Google search) to educate themselves, and instead jumped on a bandwagon started by a few idiots on the Internet.

​

Luckily, you have me to give you the rundown of Helen Keller’s incredible life.  Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968) was a deaf-blind writer and political activist.  At 19 months Keller came down with an illness (possibly scarlet fever) that resulted in her being deaf and blind. At this point she had begun speaking and walking.  At age 6, she was sent by Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone who was working with deaf children at the time, to 20 year old Anne Sullivan from the Perkins Institute for the Blind In Boston.  Sullivan remained with Keller until her death in 1936. Within months of working with Sullivan, “Keller had learned to feel objects and associate them with words spelled out by finger signals on her palm, to read sentences by feeling raised words on cardboard, and to make her own sentences by arranging words in a frame.”  From 1888-1890, Keller spent her winters at Perkins with Sullivan learning Braille.  She then began to learn to speak with Sarah Fuller of the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston, where she “learned to lip-read by placing her fingers on the lips and throat of the speaker while the words were simultaneously spelled out for her.”  Keller began school at the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York City at age 14, and preparatory school at Cambridge School for Young Ladies in Massachusetts at age 16. She then attended Radcliffe College in 1900, and graduated cum laude in 1904.  

​

Keller then began to write about blindness for women’s magazines, a taboo subject at the time. She also wrote several books, including her first The Story of My Life, and in 1919 began lecturing with an interpreter for the American Foundation of the Blind.  Soon after graduating, she also became a member of the socialist party, and wrote many articles on the subject. This was when she began to first experience prejudice from the public, who had previously been supportive of her.  Keller cofounded Helen Keller International to help combat blindness and malnutrition, and the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920.  Her efforts significantly increased conditions for disabled people at the time. She was influential in removing disabled people from asylums, and helped with the organization of commissions for the blind in 30 states by 1937.  In 1946, Keller became a counselor of international relations for the American Foundation of Overseas Blind. Between this time and 1957, she traveled to 35 countries on 5 continents.  On one of these flights abroad in June 1946, she flew one of the planes she travelled on for 20 minutes of her flight. Polly Thompson, Keller’s interpreter, signed to her the pilot’s instructions. Due to her sensitive hands, she was able to fly the plane “calmly and steadily.”  In 1955, Harvard University granted her their first ever honorary degree to be given to a woman.  Sadly, Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 that resulted in her spending the last seven years of her life at her home in Connecticut, before passing away in her sleep in 1968.

​

I’m going to be honest with you, all of that information took maybe 30 minutes for me to find and relay to you.  I have to wonder, if the people who started this trend had taken even half that out of their day to Google their questions about Helen Keller and how she accomplished all that she did, where would we be now?  Maybe not spreading ableist hate online and invalidating the deaf-blind community.  Blind creator Molly Burke, with over 841 thousand followers on Tik Tok and almost 2 million on YouTube, posted a Tik Tok addressing the harm of this trend.  She explains, 

​

“Can I just say as a blind woman, that is baffling and unbelievably offensive.  Helen Keller was definitely an inspiration to me growing up and hearing her story was a source of great hope; and I just wanted to remind all of you that if you think she couldn’t have possibly been deaf and blind and written books, gone to Harvard, been an activist, flown a plane, written her name out, you’re actually just incredibly ableist.  Blind people, deaf people, people with all types of disabilities are perfectly capable of being successful and accomplishing things in life, and just because they might be more successful than you ever will be doesn’t mean you can say they’re not real.”

​

Many disabled creators on the app have expressed the same belief about this on their own platforms.  This trend not only invalidates the work of an extremely successful disabled woman at a time where it was difficult to be successful as either of those things, it also invalidates disabled people’s accomplishments today.  By believing that Helen Keller couldn’t do the things that she did, ableist people may find it hard to believe that other deaf-blind people could accomplish things.  This ultimately makes it more difficult for disabled people to fight against an already ableist system by increasing prejudice and discrimination, as well as potentially making young disabled people internalize the ableism of others and believe that they cannot accomplish great things because of their disability.

​

Helen Keller may not be a relatable figure for you, but to the young disabled girl out there who struggles with her self-worth, Keller represents the endless possibilities of what she could achieve someday.  Keller’s story not only provided the beginning of disability rights through the United States and the rest of the world, but provides representation for a community that doesn’t see very much of it.  So before you post on Tik Tok wondering how Helen Keller could possibly learn to talk or fly a plane, take five minutes to educate yourself.  All it takes is a quick Google search to combat your own ableism and the ableism of others.

​

​