Les Jones: Judge Orders Treasury Dept to Make Blind-friendly Money

November 29, 2006

Macular Degeneration > Judge Orders Treasury Dept to Make Blind-friendly Money

The government discriminates against blind people by printing money that all looks and feels the same, a federal judge said Tuesday in a ruling that could change the face of American currency.
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.

The American Council of the Blind has proposed several options, including printing bills of differing sizes, adding embossed dots or foil to the paper or using raised ink.

I'm all for it. My mom isn't completely blind, and it's hard for her to tell the current bills apart.

It seems like the sort of problem that wouldn't be that hard to fix. We're already including special threads and strips and inks into money to foil counterfeiting. If we can do that it seems like we can do something for people who can't see well or at all during the next counterfeit-countering redesign.

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Comments

My great-grandmother went blind when she was in her 60s but lived to almost 100. She had the bank teller fold each bill according to it's denomination. I can remember her explaining it to me. "If just a corner is folded over, it's a 5 dollar bill. Folded in half length-wise means it's a 20."

Posted by: Cathy at November 29, 2006

My mom uses tricks like that, too, putting different bills in different parts of her billfold.

Posted by: Les Jones at November 29, 2006

Seems to me the easiest solution would be to make the bills different sizes - as they do in many european countries.

and I agree with the court, this is a problem. MY mother in law is nearly blind and will be so soon (though she doesn't want to admit it yet) and my great aunt is in similar shape.

Posted by: countertop at November 29, 2006

Then again, the court could take note of the fact that the u.S. Constitution allows only gold and silver coin to be "money" in the legal sense and instruct the treasury to issue same (and to declare that "Federal Reserve Notes" are NOT legal tender). Then size, and weight, will make it easy to distinguish value.

But coming back to the real world, where the constitution is ignored on a regular basis, different sizes for different denominations would be a nightmare. There is a very large infrastructure for dealing with Federal Reserve Notes that cannot deal with different sizes -- think ATMs, think vending machines, think counting machines, think cash register drawers -- heck, just think about it for more than 2 seconds.

Posted by: Bob at December 04, 2006

Bob, different sizes of notes are just one possibility.

The U.S. population is aging, with the baby boomers hitting their sixties. Now's the time to plan for something like this.

Posted by: Les Jones at December 05, 2006