(no subject)

[theweaselking]

US district judge rules that US government is unlawfully discriminating against the blind by printing money that all looks the same and is all the same size, with no way for them to tell the bills apart.

The judge points out that other countries all over the world have money of different sizes and textures without a cost or counterfeiting problem, meaning there's obviously not a *fiscal* reason to not do it.

(Before Canadians get too smug: Our bills are different colours and have Braille printing on them, but they're all the same size and the Braille is gibberish. Really, truly gibberish. The $20 reads "for for". Literally. And that's before normal use crushes the Braille divots flat, which generally takes about three foldings, making it nearly impossible for sighted people to *locate* them, let alone the blind to read 'em - but at least we're trying.)

Comments

[toku666.livejournal.com]

I've been convinced for years that somewhere, somehow, some group of Treasury agents has been making money from counterfeiting.

It's the only explanation. Oh, and keep skirts off the coins. At least we figured that one out on the third try.

[jagash.livejournal.com]

Fortunately there are only three different denominations of bills. The 20$ has three groupings of braille dots, and the 10$ has two groupings of the dots. I strongly suspect that the five has one grouping of the dot and they are set in that order precisely for identification.

I also just sampled my wallet at random and had all the braille dots despite them clearly being in common circulation.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

> The 20$ has three groupings of braille dots, and the 10$ has two
> groupings of the dots. I strongly suspect that the five has one
> grouping of the dot and they are set in that order precisely for
> identification.

Correct. That doesn't change that it's much, much harder to read 2, 4, or 6 meaningless sets of dots than it would have been to actually use correct Braille. You've got two digits worth on every bill, WHY NOT do it right?

> I also just sampled my wallet at random and had all the braille
> dots despite them clearly being in common circulation.

But could you, with your eyes closed, open your wallet, find those
dots, and tell how many there are on each bill? Without initially knowing which way is up or which way the bill is facing?

The CEO of one of the companies I work with, who is blind, cannot reliably do this on circulated money. New money, no problem. Old money, not a chance.

[jagash.livejournal.com]

1) Don't get me wrong, the proper braille should have been used but it appears better then nothing.

2) I only used a small sample size strictly with the new versions of currency, but i was able to do so without vision. At least that makes it possible in some situations, which seems to beat the bills in the states.

[cmseward.livejournal.com]

I just tried with the $5 bill in my wallet, and definitely couldn't find the braille dots by touch. It's a fairly new bill, from the look of it, but I'm not even sure I found the dots even by sight, afterwards. So yeah, not so helpful after all.

[everbloom.livejournal.com]

Australian notes, on the other hand, are all different sizes and colours. Plus they're washable!
On the other hand, they don't have any dots.

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

that shit's sweet. you know sometimez there's hope 4 us yet. this shit's fucking awe-some. puffy cash!

[takhisis.livejournal.com]

Heh. My first thought was "aww, that would ruin one of my favorite horror stories ever!"

It was about a young woman who was semi-psychotic and horribly deformed due to chemicals in the groundwater while her mother was pregnant (and her family's abuse after she was born). She lived with an old blind woman in exchange for keeping her from being ripped off by bringing in money (from people she'd killed and partially eaten) and sorting the different denominations of bills into a special filing system so the blind woman could pay the delivery boy for groceries. Very touching and fucked up.

Kind of like my priorities. ;)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I am amazed by people actually complaining about this - including implying it will be too costly and complciated. Britain hs different sized and coloured notes - many countries do - why is it such an imposition on the richest country in the world?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The arguments basically boil down to this:

#1: Change is what SATAN wants.
#2: Being more like the civilised world in any way is bad, because those places HATE AMERICA.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

Also, Monopoly uses and has always used different colours for different denominations (although not, at least on the sets I've seen, different sizes).

To me that means Parker Brothers (or whoever) is just smarter than the US Government, but to many Americans it seems to combine with the fact that Foreign Money comes in different colours (and foreign anything is toy stuff, especially money) into the idea that coloured bank notes are just funny children's toys.