Posted on 05/20/2008 7:56:57 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
US court: Paper money discriminates against blind
23 minutes ago
A federal appeals court says paper money discriminates against blind people.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld a ruling that could force the U.S. to redesign its money so blind people can distinguish between values.
Such changes could include making bills different sizes, including raised markings or printing oversized numbers for people who see poorly.
The appeals court ruled 2-1 on Tuesday that the U.S. didn't explain why such changes would be an unreasonable burden, especially since many other countries have done so.
I provided some of the reasons why I believe it would cost billions. Thundrey provided nothing but bluster and doesn't seem in the least bit interested in defending his/her contentions. I didn't ask for documentation, I asked that thundrey provide details to support his/her statement.
If you will go back and review my post, you will see a couple of reasons why I believe the cost would be in the billions. For God's sake, the federal government can't build a mile of fence for under a hundred million. They are going to retool and change the size of almost our entire monetary supply for less than billions? How can that be?
"If it was an update based on the next design of plates, adding raised marks would be a negligible additional cost to the bills. This would certainly be easier than doing different size bills."
It certainly would be and, the next time that money is due to be redesigned, I would have no problem with looking into that option. However, upthread someone mentioned the possibility of raised marks being damaged or destroyed by people just to make their purpose for naught. That has to be a consideration.
You accuse me of bluster when you are the one making an outrageous claim that it would cost ‘billions’ to make dollar bills of different sizes. They did this in the UK, and if it had costed even 10s of millions to do so it would have been a national scandal.
I think the onus should be on you to back up this ludicrous claim of yours, because I think most people here would agree that you are talking utter balls....
Have a nice evening.
Oh yeah, that's a good idea. All their money in one accessible location.
Instead of handing the cashier a single bill and taking a chance of being done wrong, hand them access to your entire fortune via debit card!!
So I take it you cannot substantiate your ludicrous claim, other than by making some off-hand and similarly unsubstantiated comment about how the government can’t make a mile of fence without spending billions of dollars?
It's governments way of taking care of the people while earning their income and welcoming the replenishing of the trough to maintain the wages. ; )
Then in the next cycle we can dispute debit cards instead of bill's and do a complete "circle" with these "jerks".
That just sounds so familiar. Haven't be been there before?
All paper documents “discriminate” against the blind.
What - eliminate ALL paper??
Surely, industry can come up with a cheap pocket device, through which a blind person can run a bill & determine its value. Ya know, like every bill-accepting vending machine has!!!
This ruling is crazy talk
It would probably be cheaper to give each blind person a scanner for free, than to run a new batch of money just to do the special printing.
It would be cheaper than the government giving 40 million people free TV tuners.
Canada has marks already, and it does not appear to be that much of a difficulty. But certainly a few bills could be altered by some ill-wishing person. It should be harder to fake a real but different bill, than it would to eliminate the marks or make them unreadable.
Doesn’t TV discriminate against the blind? They want their Smell-o-Vision!
The slot machines on the cruise ship read all bills except $2 and new $5 bills on my last cruise.
I stand ready, willing and able to relieve the sight-deficient of the horribly discriminatory “seeist” US paper currency which causes them offense.
Truly a sacrifice on my part, but I’ll do anything to make it all better.
Just wanna help out those poor folks, ya unnerstan?
Implant a chip that when squeezed sings out the value of said bill.
Will make easier for the criminals to find you.
Better yet can you imagine siting on wallet, pinching bills in such a way that they all start singing
Did I reall need this? </ Sarcasm>
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