Her only brother, Kindrick Sommers Alcorn (1880–1966) graduated from Stanford Male Academy and then nearby Centre College, getting his law degree from the University of Virginia.

[2] Alcorn attended Ward Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee and then went on to receive training in teaching the deaf at Clark School in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Adopting the methods of the famous Anne Sullivan, teacher and lifelong companion to Helen Keller, Alcorn invented a system of touch on the cheek and neck to allow the child to imitate how to speak words.

[2] When the Simpson family left Kentucky, Alcorn moved with them to answer the plea of the father of a deafblind boy, Winthrop (Tad) Chapman.

She began teaching at the South Dakota School for the Deaf and worked with Tad for four years, perfecting her system of what she called the Tadoma Tactile-Sense Method.

Hall took over the education of Tad Chapman when Alcorn left for Detroit to research the use of vibration techniques in teaching language and speech to sighted deaf children.

When Chapman was accepted in 1931 to attend the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts, Hall accompanied him and introduced Alcorn's Tadoma system to the teachers there.

In order to accommodate a greater diversity of teachers, the schools began supplementing the Tadoma method with the manual alphabet and sign language.