Tuesday April 24, 2007

Accessible U.S. Currency update

Last November I noted in this space a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson in ACB v. Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury that the United States had to make its currency accessible to the blind. Today in my local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, Edward Epstein wrote the article Changing Bills for the Blind noting that local U.S. Representative Pete Stark has proposed legislation to make small physical modifications to U.S. currency to make them identifiable by touch. Titled the "Catherine Skivers Currency Act", after past president of the American Council of the Blind Catherine Skivers, the legislation proposes literally cutting the corners of the $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, and $50 in particular patterns to make them identifiable. The $100 bill is left untouched, making it physically identical to the $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $100,000 bills. Fortunately those have been out of circulation since 1969, so this probably won't be a serious identification problem... (2007-04-24 11:59:40.0) Permalink Comments [1]