<p>The names Helen Keller and Marlee Matlin are world-famous. Helen Keller was the little deaf and blind girl whose early life inspired the stage play and the movie The Miracle Worker and Marlee Matlin was the young deaf actress from the show Children of a Lesser God. However, despite the differences in their situations, there are some striking similarities between the lives of these two remarkable women.

Helen Keller was born in 1880 in Alabama; Marlee Matlin was born in Illinois <a href="http://www.mortalkombatxhackcheats.top/" target="_blank" >mortal kombat x hack tool</a> in 1965. Yes, both were deaf; but what other similarities could be found between these two people?

Both children were born sighted and hearing. At the age of eighteen or nineteen months, both girls suffered high fevers which resulted in Marlee’s profound deafness and Helen’s profound deafness and total blindness. Neither family wanted to send their daughter to live away from home: After visiting several distant residential schools for the deaf, the Matlins enrolled Marlee in self-contained and mainstreamed classes near home. The Kellers, after considering putting Helen in an asylum, kept her at home and found Annie Sullivan to give Helen her first years of education.

As young women, both attended college. Helen Keller learned to speak, and was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor’s degree. Both were performers: Marlee Matlin’s ongoing career is well-documented, and Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan traveled the world, first in lecture circuits and then in Vaudeville shows. Both women devoted themselves to advocacy for increasing awareness in the general public for those <a href="http://www.dragoncityhackonlines.top/" target="_blank" >read more</a> with <a href="http://www.gta5hackcheats.top/" target="_blank" >gta 5 hack ios</a> physical challenges. Both campaigned for improved educational opportunities for the deaf and blind as well. Helen Keller spent her entire adult life touring the world, advocating for improved education for the deaf and deafblind. Ms. Matlin is a spokesperson for an organization called the National Captioning Institute. She was one of the driving forces that created a law that calls for all televisions 13 inches or larger to contain a chip to enable closed captioning for deaf viewers. This opened up a much larger world for deaf viewers, and has been called a godsend for the deaf.

And what about the differences between these two women? These are also remarkable.

For Helen Keller, life in general was much more limited, and this was not only because of the additional challenge of her blindness. At that time, there were no specialized services for young challenged children. When Helen was turning 7, she was mute and behaviorally uncontrollable. She had just discovered that words mean things, and had just learned her first fingerspelled words. As an adult she and her teacher had to physically travel, which was itself no easy undertaking, to make her speeches and appearances in order to strive to better the lives of the deaf and deafblind.

When she was seven years old, Marlee Matlin was fortunate enough to go to summer camp. Also, she starred as Dorothy with both hearing and deaf children in a school production of The Wizard of Oz. As an adult, travel is much easier, and apprearing via telepresence is common. Her career and her charitable and advocacy activities can be found with a few clicks of a mouse.

Different lives? Absolutely. A similar heart? Most likely. Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan, and others like them, pioneered the improvements in education for the deaf and deafblind. Marlee Matlin has continued in this cause, as will others after her.</p>