Please, Is This $1 or $100?

From The New York Times Editorial: "Please, Is This $1 or $100?"

Our nation is supposed to be a land of equal opportunity where under the law, no one is discriminated against. However, when it comes to one of the most fundamental aspects of life in our country, money, the playing field is far from level.

Most other countries in the world use mainly coins for currency, and we are one of the only countries that uses bills instead of coins for very small denominations such as the one dollar bill. This can cause many problems since paper bills obviously wear out faster than coins. Still, for the blind, this is a relatively small problem. All of our paper bills are the same size, thickness, and color, so even for slightly visually impaired individuals, telling a one dollar bill from a one hundred dollar bill is almost impossible. The Euro paper bills are all different colors and sizes making them much easier to tell apart. So the question is, is the type of money we use discriminating against the blind? The answer is yes.

So, how do we correct this issue? Changing the look of all our currency would be costly and expensive. Another option would be for the government to provide currency readers to all visually impaired citizens, but this would also be quite costly and put a lot of responsibility in the hands of the users. It is fairly likely that the currency readers might get lost, stolen, or broken, and the expense would fall in the hands of the taxpayers.

Although changing the look of our currency would be very costly, there is a large population of visually impaired individuals that deserve a fair chance at life. The government bears the responsibility of producing identifiable currency.