The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness. deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means loss of language, sets thoughts astir, and keeps us in the intellectual company of man.

Helen Keller, in a letter to J. Kerr Love, as told in The Deaf Child by J.Kerr Love (London: Simpkin & Co., 1911)