Money Everyone Can Use

The Treasury should adapt bills for the blind.

FOR THE blind and visually impaired, U.S. paper currency is trouble. Every bill is the same size; no palpable features distinguish one denomination from another. Without a portable money scanner or trusted companion, the blind are too often at the mercy of strangers. Some 170 countries have managed to produce paper currency more accessible to the blind, either by making each denomination a different size or by adding tactile features. One would think that if these other countries could find a way to accommodate the blind, then so could the United States.

But is the U.S. government a scofflaw for refusing to make its currency more user-friendly for the blind? Last month, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said yes; we are not so sure.

The American Council of the Blind sued the Treasury in 2002 for violating the Rehabilitation Act, which the Supreme Court has said requires that no one with a disability be denied "meaningful access" to any program or service run by an executive agency or using federal funds. The court has also determined that a remedy must be "effective" and not impose an "undue burden" on the government or the private sector. The D.C. Circuit agreed to hear an immediate appeal of a lower-court judge's determination that the government had denied meaningful access to the blind. But that judge had not yet ruled on whether an effective and reasonable remedy existed. The government argues such a remedy is not available. Adding raised dots to bills might be financially feasible, but those dots would soon wear down from use, the government argued. Changing the size of bills would impose an undue burden on vending machine manufacturers, who would have to spend billions to retrofit machines or develop new ones.

The point here is not that the government is correct; it's that the appeals court decided a case with only half of the needed information. The government should appeal the panel decision to the full D.C. Circuit; the full court should throw out the panel decision and send the case back to the trial judge to gather more information.

Meanwhile, the Treasury should initiate reasonable changes on its own. The government redesigns paper currency every few years; it is scheduled to unveil a redesigned $100 bill sometime in 2009. Implementing changes to accommodate the blind into the updates would save time and money. It is unclear whether existing law would compel these changes. As a matter of policy, it would be the right thing to do.