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Some Division
By Bobby Allyn
May 21st 2008
at 1:33 am EDT
I caught this on NPR this afternoon. Interestingly, National Federation of the Blind, the largest national blind organization, opposes the decision. They're afraid it will reinforce society's misconception that blind people are unable to function in the world.
A federal appeals court ruled today that the bills the United States uses for currency are indistinguishable from one another and therefore discriminate against the blind. It seems like an absurdly simple thing, but as I learned from an assistant pastor at my childhood church, blind people are forced to simply trust cashiers and bank tellers to hand them the correct change then fold the different kinds of bills in different ways to differentiate them. Furthermore, I wonder in today's heavy emphasis on the use of credit and debit cards, how does a blind person know they're being charged the correct amount if they can't see the slip of paper they are signing. It seems like a small thing to the visually enabled, but those that cannot see the numbers on bills or credit card slips lack a huge amount of independence.
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