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Judge Says U.S. Money Violates Rights of the Blind
An anonymous reader writes, "The United States is one of the few countries in the world whose currency isn't distinguishable by blind people. Most other nations use raised text, different-sized bills, or other methods to assist blind people in spending their money. If a recent decision by a federal court in D.C. survives appeal, however, that will soon change. Under Sec. 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, federal programs cannot deny 'meaningful access' to people with disabilities. Because blind people are unable to distinguish U.S. currency without assistance, the court held that they are denied meaningful access to their own money. U.S. District Judge James Robertson ordered the Treasury Department to come up with ways for the blind to tell bills apart. He said he wouldn't tell officials how to fix the problem, but he ordered them to begin working on it." How Appealing notes that Judge Robertson opened the door to a speedy appeal of his ruling.
The bills in the US are difficult to distinguish under conditions other than blindness, it's about time we caught up with the rest of the world. We make coins different shapes, sizes and textures, why not bills.
I can see quite well with glasses, and this very thing has annoyed me plenty of times. Why the hell are all our bills the same size, shape, and color? :)
Make them more distinct, and you'll speed up all cash transactions.
If nothing else the fast food industry will thank you
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Why is the Treasury Department appealing this ruling? They should embrace it and start solving the problem.
Who exactly is harmed with this decision? I don't even see why it went to court in the first place.
Doesn't it make sense to have easily distinguishable notes anyway, blind or not? Finding the correct note in your wallet is much slower with dollars than Euros or pounds.
and turn it into a coin. Not this half-assed production of a few coins and predominantly bills. Get it over with and make it purely coins. It'll make vending machines more convenient. Coins are easily distinguishable.
On mony, just have an imprinted (raised) mark whereever the denomination number is printed. It doesn't have to be elaborate - just dots like braile.
I'm surprised this didn't come sooner with the Americans with disabilities act, or some such.
but the £5 note is their only note that will comfortably fit in my standard-sized wallet.
Wallets are designed to hold money. Not the other way round. Mine holds a wad of £50 notes quite easily.
Yeah, that's always annoyed me. ... time passes...
Treasury Accountant: Hey! If we use 1$ coins instead of 1$ bills, we'll save X million dollars a day!
Treasury President: Brilliant idea, let's get on making some new 1$ coins right away.
Treasury Accountant: Well, no one is using the 1$ coins.
Treasury President: But we spent X billion dollars on marketing them! Damn, I guess 1$ coins just won't work.
Repeat every decade or so.
If you want people to stop using 1$ bills, STOP PRINTING THEM.
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That's funny - the EU countries had no problem changing their vending machines around once the Euro came. They didn't even change the machines, the money accepting mechanism is modular (woah!).
Keeping the $1 is costing money for taxpayers. If it becomes standard, vending machines will start accepting it fast. The government has the power in this case of the chicken or the egg.
This is modded 'funny', but instead I would mod it 'horrifying'. This is EXACTLY how the system would be exploited. The only use for this system is to make it so blind people don't need to ask for help to verify the money is legit. This con would then make it so they still need to ask for help. How did anything improve?
Okay, I suppose if they want to count the money in their wallet, and they KNOW it's all legit, this would help. But they each probably already have a system for that, anyhow. Different folds, dog-ears, etc. At the expense of the whole of the United States, we can help them NOT ONE BIT.
Sounds great, let's do it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
To make any changes to currency would not only require completely recirculating the billions of papers out there, but it would probably require drastic changes to the printing process. Different shapes, sizes, or including braille print sound like expensive alterations.
I doubt the courts would require all currency to be recalled, especially since much currency has only an 18-month lifespan. And since we're redesigning the larger bills (5 through 100) every 7 years or so, we've already committed to spending a certain amount of money on redesign. Incorporating some raised devices (as on Canada's currency) would be a trivial addition to the next round of redesigns.
Changing the size of currency would obviously cost a lot more, but the Treasury is constantly looking at new printing technology, and so that could also be spread out as they replace equipment. Nobody said this had to happen overnight. And, oh, we've done this before -- in the 1920's we changed from a large format currency to the current small-sized notes. And before anyone brings up vending machine and ATM manufacturers' complaints, differing note sizes hasn't hurt anyone in Europe (where ATMs regularly dispense bills in four or more denominations, each a different size).
And this might finally be what lets Congress stand up to lobbyists and kill the dollar bill. Not only are we out of step with the rest of the world on blind access to currency, we're just about the only major country stubborn enough to still use currency for our primary currency measure -- everyone else, Pounds, Euro, Canadian Dollar, Australian Dollar, have coins for 1 and 2 unit, and sometimes even 5 unit, denominations. I read recently that eliminating the dollar bill would save half a billion (BILLION) dollars a year, and that was a 1995 study, so it's probably even higher. But lobbyists (primarily for the unions that produce the paper) have consistently stopped cold any attempt to switch to coins only.
Anyway, I think the Judge is right and, though this wouldn't be free, it wouldn't be an undue burden.
And now we hit upon the Great Slashdot Self-Absorption.
Because you don't use cash any longer, no one does.
This premise can be expanded by stating that if anyone still does do the thing you don't do (or, conversely, doesn't do the thing you do) they are morons.
To ward off the sample size critics you could state that no one you know uses cash either.
Hm, I have yet to see a free money or debit card reader anywhere. For bills, money identifiers are quite expensive and a bit bulky. As far as debit card readers, those are not free either. Sometimes state agencies for the blind may be willing to pay for one, on an individual basis, but that certainly does not apply to the majority of blind people.
Also, note that you can't just use debit cards for everything. There are quite a few things in life that you do need cash for, and blind people should not be excluded from being able to use regular money.
Finally, making bills accessible isn't really rocket science. Looking around at other countries around the world, the US is really far behind in this. Unfortunately for the blind, the US treasury has a very large loophole (although it could make for an interesting legal battle): all US currency ever printed remains legal tender, so even if new bills are made accessible, there will remain a large amount of inaccessible bills in circulation for a *long* time. Other countries have been able to replace bills. On the other hand, that also means that it is even more important for the US to act on this immediately, because the problem only gets bigger (and they already missed the boat on the last bill redesign (using colour) that went through recently).
How about just using a wacky scheme like other countries; have each note in a different colour (helps partially sighted "blind" people who can distinguish colour, not to mention helping everyone else distinguish quickly), have each note a different size (helps everyone even if not the only measure to be taken), have tactile surfaces (helps blind and is another non-trivial mechanism that counterfeiters have to copy), have the numbers written large and clearly (again, helps everyone, and helps a lot of partially sighted, incl. even just longsighted).
Seriously, this stuff is not rocket science. I sincerely hope that this judgement means the US govt. will stop living in past centuries, at least when it comes to banknotes. The US is so *old* when it comes to so many things - I was astonished when I visited there! "Old Europe" is nothing like old, so much upheaval in the last century.
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There are still a whole host of low value transactions where cash is the most appropriate way to pay. Perhaps you have changed your lifestyle to fit your no cash utopia, but to suggest that others do likewise because they had the misfortune to be born blind or to have lost their eyesight is plain wrong.
The US is the onlycountry on earth with notes that are indistinguishable from one another for the blind. Here's a hint, it's not because the rest of the world is waiting to catch up to the United States...
Want to see something sad? Next time gas prices are near $3/gallon, go inside a convenience store. Don't pick a nice one.
When I visit just such a convenience store once a week to buy gas, and have to pay cash about every other time because the damn pump card reader is out-of-order, I see just such people walking in and cashing government checks - and then buying 2 cartons of cigarettes and $100 of lottery tickets. My sympathy meter is pretty much broken.
I never said that I never use cash; I said (actually, OP said) that it was possible to use no (or very little) cash. All the examples you gave are quite easy to pay for with a debit card. (The newspaper is the most problematic one, although bookstores and convenience stores sell them and take debit cards. And I should note that you aren't buying newspapers from street corners if you're blind.)
So here's the deal. On one hand, we can spend huge amounts of money to change our money system. This means changing money readers in vending machines, retraining sales clerks, changing our printing systems, dealing with fraud during the changeover, etc., etc. It's simply a huge project. On the other hand, we could ask the blind, who have been dealing with this without the benefit of ubiquitous debit cards ever since paper money has been around, to keep dealing with it in an environment more convenient for them than ever before. Maybe I'm hardhearted, but this seems like a really simple choice. We shouldn't have to make huge changes to accommodate every handicap people have.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
But hopefully the increase in GDP from tape manufacturers would offset the loss due to fraud...
I'm all for equal opportunity and everything. But this exact debate has come up time and time again. How much should the general population be subjected to via gov't mandates to accommodate disabilities?
I'm sure when we began mandating wheel-chair access there was an outcry because the cost of an average building was going to increase by a factor of X. And in all likelihood X would be larger than the returns provided the building owner due to increase sales of to people using the wheel-chair access. So, in that sense we are forcing inefficiencies on businesses (this is just one of the many ways gov't forces itself upon us and we wonder why its hard for businesses to succeed). But now wheel-chair access is an accepted stipulation for all new construction and its costs aren't even directly noticed/tracked. Does that mean that accommodating disabilities is a bad thing? No. Would it be better if it were up to the individual business owner? Maybe, but who would willingly spend money they know would never be recouped...probably no one (except nursing homes, hospitals, etc...because they would actually benefit from that). For a quick tech side-note the same ideas apply to web design (screen-reader friendly design, etc)
So to wrap up a post that could/should go on for a while. Accommodating disabilities does create inefficiencies (don't think there is an argument to that). However, the real question should be whether or not those inefficiencies are acceptable to mandate on society (some are, some aren't). Anyone that thinks we should accommodate ALL, should just go ahead and be deported. Everything would have to be colored black and white (to accommodate color blindness). All visible notices would have to be combined with as audible counterpart (for the blind) because braille would still not accommodate the braille illiterate. You see the point...its hard to determine where the line should be drawn.
I personally don't think the economic impact would be justified due to the fact that we are becoming less and less dependent on physical access to paper money. A better solution would be to either make all ATMs blind accessible (although audible interfaces would be bad for privacy) or provide free braille friendly debit card interfaces (not even sure how that would work). Again, a difficult situation.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.