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Did you know that June 27th is celebrated International Day of the Deafened Person?

Did you know that this date is intended to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of Helen Keller, on 27 June 1880, who became blind and deaf at 19 months, following a ‘brain fever’, which is now believed to have been scarlet fever?

Did you know that Helen Keller became a social activist and speaker, advocating for the rights of deafblind people, overcoming her limitations, thanks to Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired, who began by teaching Helen to communicate by spelling out words in her hand?

Deafblindness is a unique disability and not the sum of two sensory impairments, so the association of different degrees of visual and hearing impairment increase the impact of one on the other, leading to unique consequences in the person, in terms of health, education, communication, development, access to information and mobility. Thus, the word deafblindness without a hyphen indicates a unique condition, where the impact of double loss is multiplicative rather than additive – defined at the XII Deafblind International (DBI) World Conference held in July 1998 in Estoril, Portugal.

Accept a challenge! Stop a little... close your eyes and cover your ears... Think about what it means not to see or hear... Stay that way for a minute... And then what does it feel like? And when you're born that way? How to imagine a world without sound and without images? How does the thinking of deafblind children develop?

Watch the movie : Helen Keller - The Miracle of Anne Sullivan (2000)