How often have you gotten the wrong amount out of an ATM? I have been using them since they were first deployed and have never gotten the wrong amount. Also, it is rare in the US to have an ATM that dispenses any denomination other than $20 bills so a simple count of the number of bills would suffice.
My father had a totally blind friend back in the 60s who could tell by touch the denomination of a bill, provided that the bill were not too worn.
This. I recently lost the macular vision in my left eye after a retinal detachment. If I close my right eye I can maneuver around quite safely, even in strange environments. However, unless the lettering on a sign is very large I cannot read it with that eye (I keep trying in the hopes of training myself to be able to read at least a little with my peripheral vision), but I can tell the sign is there. If the same thing were to happen to my right eye I would be in the situation where I would know where the Braille is.
As a side note, it is amazing how important vision in the macula (which only comprises a few percent of the entire visual field) is to daily life…
I’m just amazed that people can actually read Braille. Maybe my finger tips are just very insensitive, but if I close my eyes and try to detect the Braille letters, there’s no way I can work out the bumps.
There’s a new guy in the building I work in who is blind, and coincidentally just yesterday I was feeling the braille on the elevator buttons to see how it felt to him. You’re right. There’s no way I could picture what I was actually touching.
I think that goes for all of us sighted people, but I’m sure with lots of practice it would start to take hold.
My aunt has a degree in teaching the blind. We used to play with her brailler (and got pretty good at it for a couple of 8-10 year old kids with some time to play with it). After a while I could look at and read the words just like anyone could read a foreign language after a few hours of instruction. But the bumps just felt like nothing. IIRC, she said that after quite a while (years?) she could start to read it with her fingers. I would have to assume she was actively working on the ability to do that. I doubt it would come naturally.
Don’t forget, ignoring the blind people have heighten senses thing, they’re still feeling the same bumps. You just tried one time and they do it all day.
Couple decades back, I was working at a not-for-profit that employed blind people, and asked one of my co-workers who was profoundly blind about that. He just memorized the appropriate sequence of buttons to push, and hoped for the best. Then, he’d ask passers-by to verify what he got out. He’d never gotten robbed or anything like that, but he said he often got weird results as the bank helpfully updated its ATM procedures and the sequence he’d memorized was no longer correct. He did agree that the beeps from the ATM were of no help; same beep whether or not you hit the correct key.
Nowadays, of course, most modern ATMs would be completely useless to the profoundly blind, as they’re all touch-screens with no tactile feedback whatsoever.
Please, do continue to ignore that myth about blind people having their other senses heightened. It’s utter bollocks. I’ve had to listen to quite a few rants in response to that kind of nonsense.
Their other senses might not be heightened, but they’ve gotten more practice at using them. Most people don’t practice most of their senses as much as they could, and like anything else, you can improve with practice.
Yeah, that’s exactly the sort of reasoning they always complained about.
FTR, I said ‘ignoring…’ because I didn’t want this to turn into a side discussion about that if I didn’t mention it since I don’t think it has anything to do with this. Perhaps we could just go back to what we were talking about.
In the UK at least, ‘talking atms’ are being rolled out in some places; they have a headphone jack, you bring your own headphones, they apparently talk you through what’s on screen.
I’ve never seen anyone use the facility though, I must admit, just noticed the logo and got curious. I might have to try it sometime.
Most countries have bills which are different sizes and with bumps on them, and even the fully-blind are pretty good at beign aware of other people nearby. A lot of them are better at spatial awareness than many seeing people; they’re highly unlikely to stop suddenly at the end of the elevator, for example.