Other people are born with limited or no sight or hearing, meaning the condition is congenital. Keller, for instance, famously lost her sight and hearing after an infection when she was not quite 2 years old. “I am on my own journey, and I am connecting with others who are alive today and who I can actually connect with.”ĭeaf-blindness broadly falls into two categories – congenital and acquired, says Jesper Dammeyer, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark who researches sensory loss, language, and thinking skills. Van der Mark, who is deaf-blind, says she only learned about Keller when attending Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, and she never really felt a connection with her. “To be honest, I don’t care much about those comments,” Lisa van der Mark, a PhD student researching international tactile communication at Leiden University in the Netherlands, says in an email. “It’s really hurtful and insulting on so many levels." That's part of what makes the denial memes and the ableist attitudes that enable them so upsetting. “A big part of what Helen Keller did was try to change the way people thought about individuals who were blind and deaf-blind,” she says.
Bruce, PhD, a professor at Boston College who researches communication development in children with disabilities, including those who are deaf-blind. “It’s very disappointing to think that a label, the deaf-blind label, would carry with it thoughts that somebody couldn’t do this, or couldn’t do that. The real challenge is getting children who are deaf-blind the unique support they need to learn and thrive. It also does not mean that the person is unable to communicate, or do things like attend and graduate college. Being deaf-blind does not necessarily mean someone is limited in what language skills they can acquire. Keller was a real person – and she was also a much more complicated figure than the version of her life many Americans learn about in school.ĭeaf-blindness is also much more complex than many people commenting on social media may realize. The Helen Keller denial meme continued to spread in 2021, sparking discussions about disability denial and Keller’s legacy. In video after video, users claimed that the 20 th century disability activist Helen Keller was a fraud who lied about her disabilities, was a Nazi, or wasn’t even a real person at all.
J– An unusual conspiracy theory started circulating on TikTok in 2020 that had nothing to do with the growing COVID-19 pandemic.
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