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Op. Ed. 
Accessible Currency
No Access Means No Freedom
Penny Reeder
Shortly after President George W. Bush took office, I was
invited, as a member of a group of Americans with disabilities, to the White
House for the Bush Administration’s unveiling of the so-called “New
Freedom Initiative.” Following on, and expanding upon the Americans with
Disabilities Act, signed by the first President Bush in 1990, the new president
Bush exalted in the law his father had signed and promised great things ahead
for people with disabilities under his administration.
Well, I guess now that the president’s term of office is
winding down, and not too much has actually happened in the arena of expanding
opportunities for people with disabilities, he’s decided his commitment to
people with disabilities was really just a platitude after all. In December,
the George W. Bush administration abandoned any commitment they may claim to
have had to people with disabilities, especially those of us who are blind when
they appealed Judge Robertson’s decision which requires the U. S.
Department of the Treasury to make our paper currency accessible to people who
cannot distinguish one bill from another by sight. It’s not really a
burden to people who are blind that they can’t tell a twenty dollar bill
from a five, the Treasury Department’s lawyers said, because – Get
this! – blind people can use electronic currency identifiers, or credit
cards instead of paper currency!
So, the rest of the citizenry, those folks who can read those
numbers on our paper bills, and recognize the presidents’ faces and know
whether it’s a Lincoln or an Andy Jackson or a what they’re holding
in their hands, those folks have access to the paper currency, but we, who are
blind, we have to go out and buy a $400 currency identifier, OR use our debit
or credit cards, many of which incur a charge every time we use them! And, this
makes us equal to people who are not blind; the credit card, and the currency
identifier, they are equivalent treatment?
I don’t think so.
Here’s what I suggest. I suggest that the attorneys for the
U. S. Department of the Treasury, and all of the folks who either live or work
at the White House, all don a pair of really dark sleep shades. Then (No
peeking!), I’ll give each of you an envelope containing an adequate amount
of paper currency. I’ll send a third of you out in taxicabs to various
destinations. Not only will the meter reading be a mystery to you, but when you
get to where you’re going, and give the cabbie the contents of your
envelope, you won’t have a clue about whether he’s giving you back
the change you’re entitled to. Just take his word for it. After all, most
people are honest, right?
Another third of you, I’ll send to the grocery store.
I’ll put you in the Express line with your 15 items or less, and I’ll
make sure that there are lots of people standing in line behind you. It’s
about 6:00 p.m., and everyone is eager to get home from work and put some kind
of dinner on the table. When you get to the check out clerk, you’ll have
to ask her what each of the bills she hands you in change are, and you’ll
have to try to put all that currency away so you won’t accidentally put a
$5.00 bill in the receptacle on the bus, rather than a $1.00. All the people in
line behind you will probably begin fidgeting, some will mutter – just
loud enough for you to hear – and you’ll feel kind of anxious and out
of sorts as you file away your currency and hope for the best when you catch
that bus.
And, the final third of you who have decided that “The
Blind” really don’t deserve to be treated like everyone else in the
country and the equivalent treatment provisions of the Rehabilitation Act of
1973 really don’t apply to “The Blind,” well, I’m going to
introduce you to the Nation’s Capital-area’s ParaTransit system. I
want to know what will happen when you try to give a MetroAccess driver your
envelope full of currency. There’s no way he will accept a credit card
even if you cheat and dig that out. And, if you don’t have the right
change, your driver may – as mine did recently when I handed her a twenty
instead of a one – threaten to “just put you off,” because you
should know the rules, after all!
What do you say, President Bush? How do you like being at the
mercy of strangers when you need to distinguish one paper bill from another?
Are “The Blind” really such an insignificant portion of our citizenry
that you can just ignore their need for information and tell them they
don’t really need to be able to identify their currency. It’s not
your problem, it’s theirs! Is that how the so-called “New
Freedom” initiative goes?
By the way, your argument about the hardship that making
currency accessible may represent for the vending machine industry –
it’s ludicrous!
What, are there no vending machines in the other 108 countries
throughout the world who, without any prompting from anyone just knew that it
is a “no-brainer” to make currency accessible to everyone who needs
to use it? Didn’t the vending machines that populate the U. S. landscape
have to change their software or their hardware or their mechanical clockworks
when the U. S. Treasury was kind enough to enlarge the size and increase the
boldness of the printed “20” and the “10” in the bottom
right-hand corner on the back side of those bills to make them accessible to
the low vision folks among us? Or, when they added that UV reactive plastic
strip to our bills in an attempt to foil the counterfeiters?
I was working at the American Council of the Blind when we
decided to bring suit against the Department of the Treasury. I can still
remember our sense of excitement when we wrote the first news releases about
the Section 504 complaint, and our shared knowledge that we were right:
Currency is a mode of commerce that all Americans use, and it should be
accessible to every one of us. As the Treasury Department employed one delaying
tactic after another, my enthusiasm was sadly tested. But, my sense of elation
when Judge Robertson reached his decision eleven days ago was a joyful
culmination. It’s not that often after all that something one believes in
and works hard to achieve is so dramatically corroborated!
Now, I’m back in the doldrums of depression. Even though
the judge’s words make eminent sense to every thinking American, even
though the promises of the Americans with Disabilities Act have made a
difference, at least in terms of attitude, for many of us with disabilities,
even though Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act has been the law of the land
for more than three decades and a few noticeable differences have been made
since then, the Bush Administration has the nerve to deny our right to
accessible currency! What a disappointment! What a shame!
So much for talk of freedom and equality and improved
opportunity! Here we are, once again, those uppity blind men and women who had
the audacity to believe that the laws of our land actually meant freedom and
equality for those of us who can’t see. Here we are, disappointed and
angry, tired of platitudes, and promises, and sanctimonious pronouncements
about equality and justice and new freedoms: New freedoms will be meaningful
freedoms when we, as people who are blind, have the same access to information
– including information about our paper currency – that the rest of
our citizenry enjoys, and not until then.
Respectfully,
Penny Reeder
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