Braille

• When reading Braille, one hand marks the current line and the other feels the letters.Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images
  
  Braille is a writing system consisting of raised dots that blind people use to read and write. Students can write short messages in Braille using a slate and stylus, a special tool used to create raised dots by hand, or practice reading raised messages with their fingers or eyes and translating them into regular English writing. When writing on a Braille slate, the message starts out upside down and must therefore be written in mirror image.
  
  

Blindfolded Writing

• One way to help students understand how hard it was for Helen Keller to communicate as a deaf and blind person is to have them attempt to write while wearing a blindfold. Give them words or short phrases to write after their eyes are covered. To take the lesson even further, try the activity again, but with the students wearing ear plugs instead of, or in addition to blindfolds. Guide students to imagine how frustrating it must have been when Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan were first trying to learn how to communicate with each other.
  
  

Helen Keller Research

• Students may also want to research the life and activities of Helen Keller. Her life provides many rich topics for study and writing. These include a summary of her life, her early years of education under Anne Sullivan and her later work fighting to improve the lives of the blind and disabled. Help students pick a topic and find a few resources, then let them share the results of their research with one another when they are done writing their papers.
  
  

Describe a Deaf-Blind Experience

• Assign students to go through one regular daily activity with a blindfold and earplugs, then write about their experience. The activity can be something simple like eating a meal, going to the mall or spending time with friends. Students should reflect on what they expected to find easy and difficult and how their experience matched or differed from their expectations. They can also write about what measures they ended up taking to communicate with the people around them as they tried to carry out their tasks while vision and hearing impaired.