Judge: Make Bills Recognizable to Blind

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, November 29, 2006 05 22 AM

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.

"Of the more than 180 countries that issue paper currency, only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations," Robertson wrote. "More than 100 of the other issuers vary their bills in size according to denomination, and every other issuer includes at least some features that help the visually impaired."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n...

That last statement is not actually correct. In fact, 37 currencies do nothing to aid the blind in identifying different denominations, but the US dollar is the only major currency to do so. All other currencies either have different sizes for different denominations, some sort of raised features, or both.

The red countries have currencies with no aids for the blind, the blue countries have currencies that have some sort of unique raised feature to differentiate between denominations, the yellow countries have currencies that have different sized banknotes to differentiate between denominations, and the green countries have both raised features and differently sized banknotes. Note that national boundaries are obliterated where several adjacent countries use the same currency as is the case for the Euro, West African Franc, Central African Franc, and a few others.

But there the US dollar is, alone among the major currencies in being difficult for the blind, in the same company as Liberia, Zambia, and Turkmenistan. Even the North Korean Won and Malawian Kwacha have features that aid blind identification. Heck, even the currencies of fake countries like Somaliland and Transneistria have features that aid blind identification!

Kudos to Judge James Robertson for this decision!