US Paper Money Discriminates Against the Blind

CWRUisTakingMyMoney writes in to let us know about a US Appeals Court ruling declaring that paper money discriminates against blind people who must rely on others to tell them what denomination of money they have. "A US federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that the country's one-sized paper money discriminates against the blind and told the government to change the currency's size and texture. The court upheld a previous ruling in November 2006... [that] had ordered the Treasury Department to find a way to accommodate the more than three million visually-impaired Americans who have trouble distinguishing the different US denominations which are all the same size and color... 'A large majority of other currency systems have accommodated the visually impaired, and the [Treasury] secretary does not explain why US currency should be any different,' the court said in its ruling."

Comments

Who designed American money anyway?

[jeremymiles]

I moved to the US 18 months ago, from the UK, and I'm amazed by the money, and how user unfriendly it is.

All the notes are the same size and color - I stand at the head of the queueline at the checkoutregister, and take notes out of my wallet, one at a time, saying "Nope, that's a single; nope, that's a single; I'm sure there's a 20 in here somewhere."

Then there are the values. in the UK, coins range from 1p (~2c) to £2 (~$4). If you want to pay for something in a vending machine, there's a coin. Here, you've got to feed in a note, clean it, try again, give up with that note, try another note, etc, etc.

If it doesn't take notes, you've got to use quarters, worth about 13p. To do our weekly washing requires a small mountain of coins, which need to be jealously hoarded.

Then there's the size of the coins - why doesn't size correlate with value? Shouldn't a dime be bigger than a nickel?

And finally, there's the fact that none of the coins say how much they are worth on them. A dime? What's that worth than? I don't know, and I can't find out.

Before new coins are introduced in the UK they do research to determine the best size for them, to help blind people (and others) distinguish between them. There's a PDF here, which very briefly describes some of it. (Sorry, it's a PDF, and that's the Google link).

hah. one article hidden from all

[nawcom]

hilarious. hidden from view, almost a day after posted and only 4 comments.

tits boobies gnaa!!

someone mod this comment informative.

The story is true, but

[EkriirkE]

They have pocket money reading machines that speak the value, like feeding a bill into a vending machine, the little gizmo knows that it is...

http://www.tiresias.org/equipment/eb17.htm
at the top of this link are a couple of the devices. I like how the euro one is simply a ruler.