How do the blind know what denominations of money they possess?
if something cost 5.95, and she handed a woman a dollar, and .95 9because it is easier to feel coins than dollar bills), how would this play out, and if not, Should the U.S. Gov’t print out “Braille” bills? bills with holes punched in them for easy knowledge of denomination?
A friend of mine is blind…and he’s got a neat trick that he said he’s been doing for years…and it was also in that Ben Affleck movie….based on some comic or something…
Anyway…he has a very trusting person…sometimes it’s a bank employee…sometimes a family member or trusted friend fold the various bills in different ways…1′s were folded in half, 5′s were folded in half 90 degrees opposite…10′s were diagonal and so forth. He has to very carefully place things in his wallet and be sure not to be too rough, but for him, it’s worked great. He also has the advantage of not being completely totally blind…so if he holds the bill close enough in bright light, he can make enough out of what it is.
The acceptance of debit/credit cards for everything has pretty much eliminated this problem. He also told me once this is the reason ATM’s only give out 20′s…so a blind person could use the ATM and know the bills were all the same. He uses cash less.
They also have hand-held bill-readers that will read off what bill it is.
The thing about the current bills is that the mint designed them to be durable and last a while, the less often you have to replace them, the cheaper it is to manufacture them in the first place, and that’s not for the bill itself…but due to the anti-counterfitting features…EVERY feature of the bill has to hold on. The problem with the braille bill design is it compromises the durability of the bill…obviously if you’ve got holes in the bill already, that creates an area that’ll tear easily. Likewise, embossing doesn’t hold up for very long. It’s the same reason they never put holograms on money to prevent counterfitting…the hologram is useless the first time it’s folded or wadded up.
