Court Confirms US Paper Money Must Help Blind

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has upheld a 2006 ruling by a federal judge that U.S. paper money must employ features to make the denominations of the various bills easily distinguishable to the blind and visually impaired.

While U.S. coins have long employed features including size, weight and reeded edges to assist the blind, the Treasury Department has resisted demands that paper money follow suit. In its appeal to the 2006 ruling, the Treasury argued that employing features needed to make the denomination of paper bills distinguishable to the blind would create an undue hardship on the vending machine industry and be too expensive to implement.

In denying the appeal, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the government had failed to prove its claims of economic hardship. "A large majority of other currency systems have accommodated the visually impaired, and the Secretary [Sec. of Treasury Henry M. Paulson, Jr.] does not explain why U.S. currency should be any different," wrote Judge Judith W. Rogers in the court's 2-1 majority opinion.

Currently, blind people use costly optical bill-reading scanners or ask a trusted sighted person a bill's value, then fold the different denominations in representative ways.

The original suit was brought by the American Council of the Blind, under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The Treasury Department has not yet announced if it would appeal the decision further.

Also See:
Judge Rules US Paper Money Must Accommodate the Blind (2006)
Government Appeals Currency for Blind Ruling (2006)
Bill Would Protect the Blind from "Silent" Electric Cars