Accurate?

Helen was born 27 June 1880, and she lost her sight and hearing in Feb. 1882 at the age of nineteen months.

She was obviously intelligent, speaking her first words "How d'ye" and "tea" by six months, and walking on her first birthday "They tell me I walked the day I was a year old." She learned and used other words just —like any other one-year-old— before her illness.

However after the illness, language began to slip away, and all she was still saying by the time Anne entered her life was "wah-wah" for water.

If a child was born blind and deaf—and nothing were done until they were the age Helen is in the movie—it is likely impossible they would be able to ever grasp the complex ideas behind language. Otherwise, the story, seems pretty accurate.

Helen was the first deaf & blind person to earn a BA degree, graduating cum laude from Radcliffe. She could speak English, French and German; and was literate in those languages, Greek, and Latin.

She and Anne toured with vaudeville in 1918, and were in the silent film Deliverance (1919) www.imdb.com/title/tt0010061/

My grandfather knew Helen in the 1930's, and she inscribed his copy of her first book, The Story of My Life. Her handwriting is quite distinctive, and easy to read.