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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."
If we make bills different sizes, the $20 bill had better still be ATM-sized (or else buy stock in an ATM company). Oh yes -- in any case, buy stock in a cash register company. Unless we keep the bills the same size and give them all different textures, edge designs, or what-not. Maybe bills should be embossed in Braille? They wouldn't stack as compactly, but it might beat other forms of retooling.
Canadian paper bills have braille on them.
Or do until the bumps get worn down.
Just using raised ink for the number-value of the currency would help, or even making that into braille.
In Canada, we have a holographic strip in our bills as well. That strip could be shaped distinctively for each bill.
It's smooth where the strip is, so someone could follow the strip with their finger, and by either printing on top of it or increasing the frequency of waves in the strip respective to the bills value would work. That's right, the holographic strip is kind of wavy.
We've got some new bills that are slightly colored: pinkish 20s and purplish 5s, apparently to fight counterfeiting.
It is NOT to stop counterfeiting....
:-)
They made Australian notes plastic to be waterproof. So you can swim up to the bar in the middle of the pool and still pay for a beer
If you release a coin in small quantities, then of course they are going to become collectable and sit in collectors' drawers. That happens with £5 coins too, despite 30 million of them going into circulation since 1990. If they're really serious about introducing a dollar coin, they'd do a proper production run, and judging by the economics cited by other countries' mints, they'd save a lot in printing costs by making the move completely.
Having seen a documentary a few years back about the US updating its currency (in the late 1990s I think), I think the problem is not that they don't consider the usability of their currency, it is that they place too much importance on the opinions of their test group. People are resistant to change, so they'll tell you they don't like using a dollar coin, different sized notes ("they don't look tidy in my wallet" was the reason given), or different colored notes ("looks unamerican"). But if the treasury was bold and made the change anyway, people would get used to it, just as they do in other countries.
Well, it'd certainly be an interesting currency. It would probably vie with early post-barter systems based on large bags of elephant dung for the title of "most inconvenient currency ever".
I don't know who makes ATMs in America ; I know that the ones on the streets of Britain, Norway, France, Russia, Germany, Tanzania, and (if I recall correctly) Azerbaijan are made by the "usual suspects" such as Motorola, NCR and other multi-national currency-handling manufacturers. There may be others - I've not made any effort to be systematic in noting manufacturers logos even if they're visible.
Given that, are you seriously proposing that manufacturers actually produce one range of products specifically tailored for one size of notes in one country, and a different set of products with an overlapping specification for use in the rest of the world?
The big difficulty in ATMs isn't the area of the notes, or their dimensions ; it's counting the edges of the notes and making sure that the right number are dispensed. My bet would be that *that* area is where the patents are applied. The rest of the machine is just sheet-handling machinery - probably somewhat better quality than you get in a £100 laser printer, but not fundamentally different. So that means one product line, world wide, with the only localised differences being in logos and software.
Look closely at the next ATM that you can (without being arrested for having a terrorist-like excessive interest in valuable machinery) - compare the width of the cash-dispensing slot's weather-proofing with the width of the widest note in your currency : unless you live in a country with the widest currency in the world, you'll most likely find that the slot will accommodate wider notes than you use.
You'll probably find that the dimensions to which ATMs are built are now acting as constraints on the dimensions of note design.
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