US Paper Money Discriminates Against the Blind 45
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."
I must be blind ... (Score:3, Funny)
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Who designed American money anyway? (Score:3, Informative)
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). [google.com]
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Fortunately, with money, there is a great inCENTive to learn what a dime is worth...
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*The US has released many iterations of the Dollar coins but no one uses them; people hated the Susan B. Anthony because of the similarity to the Quarter, The Sacajawea Dollar was applauded but mainly collected and the new Presidential Dollar coins have similar collector-based problems. If Americans truly wanted to use Dollar coins, there would be more in circulation instead of sitting in shoe boxes gath
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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 upda
Treasury Shenanigans (Score:2)
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British coinage has way more problems than American coinage. You have a 2p bigger than a 20p, a 5p smaller than a 1p and a 10p larger (thicker, I'll grant) a Pound piece. That two Pound piece while I do like it could cause blunt force trauma if you threw it at somebody. With that many coins in my back pocket I'd develop a back problem.
That's not a problem, we use colour, weight, and shape to help distinguish coins - 1p and 2p are round, copper coloured coins, 5p and 10p are round silver coloured coins, 20p and 50p are seven-sided silver coloured coins, £1 is a thick, round golden coin, £2 is a large, thin, bi-metallic coin. It's easy to distinguish them by touch, even when they're in your pocket and you've got about £9 in loose change in there.
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What's so hard about looking at the numbers on the bills? They're in each corner on both sides. If you keep them sorted, it takes no time at all to pul
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And what's great is that it's so obvious I only need to say it once.
hah. one article hidden from all (Score:1, Informative)
tits boobies gnaa!!
someone mod this comment informative.
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The story is true, but (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.tiresias.org/equipment/eb17.htm [tiresias.org]
at the top of this link are a couple of the devices. I like how the euro one is simply a ruler.
Kennita (Score:2, Interesting)
ATM dimensions (Score:3, Interesting)
By ATM-sized, I take it that you mean "about 0.5m wide, 1m deep and 1.5m high"? At least that's the size of common free-standing ATMs over here, and I'd assume that the ones built into walls are about the same size behind the brickwork.
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
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My solution (Score:2)
Punching a different size hole in the bill according to it's denomination. The larger the hole, the smaller the bill, so you couldn't 'upgrade' them with scissors. Or elliptical holes parallel/perpendicular/diagonal to the length of the bill. The main advantage I see is that there would not need to be much expansive change to the existing printing setup.
The only problems I see is that it may negatively affect
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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.
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Compared to Australian Money... (Score:1)
I supose its to be expected that America would lag the rest of the world in its currency, considering you still use imperial measurements
See pic of Australian notes: Australian Money [mongie.com]
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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
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There is a workaround (Score:1)
A Solution (Score:1)
A device that tells them which bills? (Score:1)
Huh?
Wouldn't it be easier to have blind people use a device that can TELL them which bill it is?
Plus, that device can genuinely authenticate it being valid currency using some of the high-tech methods that change machines use.
Surely that has to be better than changing the size or texture.
If we *merely* changed the size and texture, people could trick blind people all the time with their FALSE sense of confidence that they have a $100 bill because it's fuzzy and rounder, but they really just got han
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No Good Reason to Change (Score:1)