Helen Keller was an author, lecturer, and humanitarian who had immense influence on the lives of the handicapped through her work on their behalf. At 19 months of age, because of a damaging brain fever, she became blind and deaf. With the help of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, Keller learned to read Braille and to write by using a special typewriter. Their early relationship was the subject of The Miracle Worker, a 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning play and a 1962 film. Keller graduated with honors from Radcliffe College and began a life of teaching, lecturing, and raising money on the behalf of the handicapped.