At what point is accomodating the handicapped a negative-sum game? Should the government be forced to revamp all US currency to accomodate the blind?
Personal opinion: Yes. It’s done in most other countries, by varying the size of the bills, or printing with raised ink. It’s about time we got with the program and made our currency more modern. I don’t buy the Treasury argument about counterfitting. If anything, the new bills would make them harder to counterfeit, IMO.
Discussion?
Sounds like a great idea to me. I definitely think it would make counterfeiting more difficult.
I agree. If “more than 180” (to quote the article) countries print paper money of different size and color to aid the blind in using money more effectively, then the excuse of counterfeiting worries just doesn’t add up. They can make 50 different quarters and a gajillion coin dollars that are all different, but they can’t make a $20 smaller than a $50? I don’t understand the problem. Surely more variation will further complicate and foil counterfeiters, and the rest of us will carry around our iodine pens to figure out what’s real this week until we’re used to the new designs, just like we’re doing already.
I vote for raised print; I haven’t used a lot of (ie, any) foreign money, but I suspect different-sized bills would disrupt the orderly-looking arrangement in my wallet. Though, differing-sized bills would probably wear better than raised print.
I don’t think different color money would help the blind much though.
While I agree that this is a worthy goal, there would be a lot of costs involved to buisinesses and individuals above and beyond the costs of retooling the printing presses.
A few obvious examples:
[ul]
[li]Virtually every cash drawer in the US would have to be replaced.[/li][li]ATMs would need to be refitted/reprogrammed[/li][li]Vending machines that accept bills would need to be changed[/li][li]Most wallets would need to be replaced[/li][li]Etc.[/li][/ul] Sometimes a proposed solution seems to be the obvious choice until you start looking at all the hidden costs.
Differing-sized bills are just fine in the wallet. In fact, they help it to be more orderly, as the sighted too can more easily differentiate between denominations. I support the use of braille, as well, though.
FatBaldGuy missed your post: most other countries in the world have undergone this sort of change to currency for various reasons and have successfully adapted. I have no reason to believe the US would be any less competent.
I have a wallet which has been able to hold Australian, Canadian, Chinese, Hong Kong, New Zealand and UK money, as well as US money.
(But I did buy it in Hong Kong about 10 years ago: perhaps they have wallet-making technology in Hong Kong that far exceeds that available in the US. For one thing, it has three separate compartments for notes, so I can carry three different currencies at the same time!).
Actually, I don’t think most countries do it for that reason. Second, we actually have a number of small technologies which already solve the problem for the blind.
But a lot of people with serious vision problems aren’t completely blind, and being able to just select the ‘red one’ or the ‘yellow one’ might be a lot easier than trying to read the numbers every time.
Oh, were we talking about them, two? I thought this tread was about the blind, and of them I crafted my response.
And regarding the costs of changing over, hasn’t the US changed its money a few times in the recent past? Moved the portrait around, added metallic strips, etc? How was that handled?
I wasn’t saying that we couldn’t do it or that we wouldn’t be able to adapt. I’m just saying that there would be a lot of hidden costs involved.
Yes, and that has required reprogramming of the devices that accept bills (vending machines, etc.), but none of the changes so far has involved changing the physical size of the bills.
Would ‘embossing’ the money or otherwise marking it with raised text or letters cause similar problems?
Then you’re working off a different definition of “blind” than the rest of us.
We’re talking about people with visual disabilities severe enough to be considered legally blind and covered by legal protection against discrimination when reasonable accommodations could prevent hardship for them.
That includes a lot of blind people who can see colors. The legal and medical definition of "blindness " is “Partial or complete loss of sight with visual acuity of not greater than 20/200 in the better eye with correction or a field not subtending an angle greater than 20 degrees.”
FatBaldGuy, why would cash drawers and wallets need to be replaced if we reduced the size of some bills? Enlarge, I could see a problem with, but going smaller wouldn’t affect things. The other points you raise, I grant.
Someone seems to be missing the point that American money is already embossed.
Not heavily, of course (and that might not be the proper term for what they do to the bill, but you CAN feel the ink, or whatever it is). But I, closing my eyes, can be handed a random bill (old or new style) and can feel the corners and tell what amount of money I’m handling. I am not blind. My great-grandfather, before he passed away last year, lost all sight, and could still handle his own monetary transactions without getting screwed over because he could tell what amount of money he was handling. He had more problems using his cell phone.
I could see this being a problem after a few years of use - the raised ink wears down, which is, I THINK, why a lot of vending machines don’t take rumpled dollars too well. But I didn’t even like it when they came out with the new style of dollars; I’m against changing them all over again. I would, however, be in favor of having braille inserted or something similar. But changing them all over again? Good lord, no thanks. It would be an inconvenience at best, a catastrophy at worst (if you think people threw a fit over things like license plate changes, wait until you screw with their money).
~Tasha
I guess I was thinking based on other currencies that I have seen that the bills would probably be made taller, but not as wide as our current bills, with different aspect ratios for the different denominations.
But even if we kept the current dimensions as the maximum, cash drawers would become somewhat of a problem because the extra “slippage room” would make it harder to keep the bills stacked neatly.
Here’s something the referenced article got me wondering: How, exactly, does different color ink help the blind differentiate? I guess the wording was just a bit off.
Great idea! Whos going to pay for it all? I mean, not just the printing of all new bills, but for all the machines to handle them? What would the cost be…and really, is that cost worth it? How quickly would we have to change over? A phased approach taking a decade or more? Or more quickly? How large is the complaint? Not being blind, I have no idea myself…nor does it seem there are hordes of blind folks screaming for this.
Frankly, unless someone can tell me the costs would be low over all, I don’t see that its worth doing.
-XT
Re the judge’s decision: It’s about time.
Re the complaints: I think there’s a certain useful life of a dollar bill reader anyway. Changing over a lot at once would be a pain, but the companies doing it could be funded by nice friendly federal pork, & smart Congressmen could use this to their personal advantage in our system:
“I sponsored legislation to change the currency to help the visually impaired!” “I brought the contract to retrofit cash registers here, to Podunk!” I’m quite sure that both Democrats & Republicans in my home state would be pleased as punch to say these things, & with an aging population, there will be incentive.
Well, not doing it is no longer an option, barring an appeal and/or a stay while same is pending. Right now, there’s a court order that says the Treasury Department has to start working on a fix to the problem within 30 days.
A lot of the cost arguments remind me of initial opposition to the ADA. Now, it’s no big deal. You expect to see handicapped ramps, bathrooms, water fountains, etc. pretty much everywhere. Yeah, it cost some money to do those those things. Money well spent in my book.