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CNN Money – November 28 2006, via the always interesting Overlawyered.com:

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people.

Judge James Robertson, in a ruling on a suit by the American Council of the Blind, ordered the Treasury to devise a method to tell bills apart.

The judge wrote that the current configuration of paper money violates the Rehabilitation Act’s guarantee of “meaningful access.”

“It can no longer be successfully argued that a blind person has ‘meaningful access’ to currency if she cannot accurately identify paper money without assistance,” Robertson wrote in his ruling.

American Council for the Blind v. Sec’y of the Treasury, United States District Court of Columbia (2006):

Unable to identify the value of paper money without help from others, blind and low vision individuals are always at risk of being cheated. The frequency of such acts against blind and low vision individuals is impossible to measure, because victims may not know that they have been deceived unless someone tells them. Ms. Brunson, Dr. Stephens, and Mr. Sheehan could recall only a few instances when they learned that they had been defrauded.2 It is reasonable to assume, however, that deliberate fraud or accidental shortchanging may go unnoticed for some time, and that some instances may never be noticed.

For example, Ms. Brunson recalled one occasion in which a store clerk informed her she was being given a $20 bill. She later learned, when attempting to make another purchase, that this bill was actually worth only $5.