it comes in pints?

Okay, I know I'm mildly compulsive, but:

if they go to different sized money I will not be able to cope. I like being able to line up my money in my purse by denomination and have it all fit together well. If they do little skinny bills and big fat whacking bills, it will look unbalanced.

(Not to mention that the Wallet Manufacturers of America are probably lobbying for bills bigger than what currently exists - because if the money doesn't fit any more, everyone has to buy new wallets.)

I had a grandma who was blind. She relied on the kindness (and honesty) of other people to tell her if a bill was a 20 or a 5, and when she went to the bank she had the teller line the bills up in order. I think she put dividers in her wallet so she knew where everything was.

I'd not have an issue with little raised dots or little fuzzy dots or something on the money, but I sort of cringe at the thought of different sized bills for different denominations.

I hope that doesn't make me some kind of a hater.

I also don't like the Technicolor money; it feels fake and unserious to me somehow.

Just give the blind folk atm/debit cards and be done with it.

Treasury was looking at making bills longer, ricki. I hope they don't do that. that would not be cool.

Most blind people currently will get someone to tell them which bill is which and then fold them differently. Usually ones stay flat and then you fold 5's in half, 10s in 1/3s and 20s in 1/4 or something like that... but each person usually develops their own deal.

Giving a subtle clue would be easier, like a sandpaper like finish on bigger denominations or something, but considering the court battle went on for 5 years, I doubt that subtly will win... never does.

[full disclosure: i'm legally blind.]

alli, do you have the computer read text to you? that's fantastic. i hope your idea of subtler clues takes hold, as the cost to have to re-tool every vending machine in the nation seems exceedingly prohibitive.

I also keep my money in my wallet by denominations, with the faces all facing the same way.

If they go to different-sized denominations, my head will explode.

What I REALLY want to know is how much money the fucking shysters are getting and who's paying it. I suspect I already know the answer to the second part.

Hey Bingley,

I have a screen reader but I don't use it very often. With my reading glasses I have enough vision to see print. Not enough to drive or anything, but reading is nice. :-)

Which shysters are you talking about Ken? The Treasury Dept or the American Council for the Blind? :P

Shysters in general ;)

As I recall, part of the redesign of the paper currency was the addition of the extra-large plain number in the one corner (surrounded by empty space) to help the visually-impaired. Alli, you're in a better position than I am to say if that actually helps.

I've also recently read that the US Treasury is trying yet again to roll out (heheheh) dollar coins for general circulation; they'll have the same size, color, and smooth edging of the Sacajawea coin but they'll rotate the Presidents the way the states are taking turns on the quarter. They hope the collector's angle will make the coin viable so they can finally phase out dollar bills.

(Personally I think it's bunk. If they wanted to phase out dollar bills they could just do it, and strike the coins, and tell us "tough" they way they do with every other damned little thing. Also, $25 for two full sets of state quarters is one thing - but $45 for a single set of Presidents? Especially clunkers like Harding and Zach Taylor? Shouldn't William Henry Harrison only get a nickel, based on his term length?)

The number surrounded by empty space does help if you have some vision, but if you are totally blind you are pretty much at the mercy of whatever cashier you have (most people are usually very nice about telling you which bill is which, but its still a pain in the ass) They did come out with machines that could read money for you, but they are finicky, unreliable and generally annoying at least from what I've heard. I've never used one.

Coins will never take hold. Who the hell wants to carry around change if they don't have to? Seriously.

there needs to be more done for the handicaped

One thing to be said in favor of change is that it takes longer for it to wear out than bills.

That said - couldn't they print bills on Kevlar paper or something? They could maybe even do little punch-holes in the paper that could be felt - and therefore would help those with low vision.

It is something that needs to be addressed - because I tend to feel that the populace is getting more likely to rip off people and less likely to want to help - so my gut says something should be done to make bills low-vision friendly. I just think they're maybe going about it the wrong way, with lawsuits and such.

Coins are the logical answer. Perhaps a strong plastic with an internal rfid chip.

I wonder if it's more cost efficient simply to make sure that most places have debitcard machines than to go through all the expense of redesigning currency and retooling millions of vending machines.

Yeah, but then that would discriminate against those of us who still don't trust the security of debit cards if they are lost/stolen (I don't have one because I'm too afraid someone would be able to clean out my account before I realized it was gone. Yeah, I'm kinda distractable).

Or, for that matter, it would discriminate against those people who fear and loathe credit and debit cards as either The Mark Of The Beast or as the creeping hand of government in controlling our lives. (You laugh, but I knew a person in that second category. He did not even have a checking account. He did everything on a cash-only basis).

no, because you could still use cash-ola, ricki; and i know folks in all those categories you mention; the plastic option is to be inclusive of the blind folks.

The whole money is interesting if you look at it globally. If you spend any significant time in another country, you'll find some interesting habits about your spending habits of their currency.

While in Japan, the 100 and 500 yen ($1 and $5-ish) currency are coins and the smallest paper currency is 1,000 ($10). For an American who has spent their entire life considering change to be small sums of money, you'll find yourself dropping 100 and 500 yen coins pretty quickly before you realize that you're dropping a buck or five bucks a pop.

Rotating currency is inevitable. The Treasury Dept. has to stay ahead of counterfeiters and will continue to change paper money. So, we're going to see more colors and more "security features." I don't see what the problem would be with adding some textures to help the visually impaired differentiate between the bills.

When I first got out of the Army and was going to school, I worked at a video store. Our store was just down the street from the Louisiana Center for the Blind and it was easy to see how much extra effort these folks had to make just to pay for a service.

Wow, I typed that fast. Pardon the typos, please.

As to identical color bills: What the HELL does that have to do with helping blind people? "Excuse me, I'm blind, could you tell me which of these bills is the $20?" "Yeah, it's the purple one."

Sous:

Even those with serious vision problems have some shade of color vision, usually. The docs call it object perception, but we usually refer to it as blobs. The number of people who have light perception only or less is actually very low. Color is good. Unless its the icky orange they're making the new 20s in. That shit needs to stop.

Many have been wooed to the debit card, but what do you do when you're buying a candy bar or something? Does that make sense? Or you want to leave a tip at the restruant. Saying "embrace the credit" is great, but there smaller things that matter too that credit just isn't very sensible to use...

Alli, I think Brian's point is the same as my mockery of the sentence. Many vision-impaired people may see color, but the totally blind cannot.

My biggest problem with this is that it is sent down by judicial fiat. Also, it's not in this story but the radio feed this morning mentioned giving the government 10 days to come up with a plan of some sort (details hazy, I was driving at the time, so it may not be quite as bad as that sounds). It is not possible to come up with any kind of workable draft of a plan in that timeframe.

I think it's possible, and actually desireable, to come up with a way to solve the problem without overly inconveniencing the rest of us (different size bills would do that). This crew came up with several ideas in just a few hours.

But I also think that playing with the colors is silly. It would help some people but not others, while some of the other ideas could also help the totally blind.

In the 5 years the lawsuit went on they tried several times to lobby for change (petitions, summits, private research) Treasury refused saying (from what I recall from my sketchy following of the case) that money was as accessible as it could get and that there was no legal reasoning behind making it more "invasive" (IIRC, could very very well be wrong)

There is a 10 day window, but thats to decide whether they are going to appeal the ruling or not. A time line for a plan is forthcoming, but first they have a chance to file an appeal.

(Sous: sorry about the lack of snark awareness. I've had 3 different websites with friends on them call me a loon for caring about this. Little touchy. Will be better in the future. )

Alli,

I can understand your sensitivity, and as Ken mentioned, my point was that color coded money will do nothing for the totally blind, which is who the article purports to be from.

I see no need to re-color the entire bill. Why not just the oval surrounding the denomination amount? As for the totally blind, I think the idea of some sort of braille-coded money is a better idea than size-coded money.

This is ultimately sanctiond by "Diversity" - so with that mandate as discovered by certain recent Justices in the Constitution, there is no recourse or avoidance.
They want to roll over the clover and go towards the Great Goosey-Guilder, the freshly minted sprig of Kerry-coinage, the Belgiquo-Euro-Money with the spirographic kaleidoscopic faces of mad unelected bureaucrats and Mother Goose that changes size and color every few years to stay ahead of counterfiters and keep the gnomes of Switzerland busy. Sheesh.