Do dollars discriminate? Most Americans wouldn't like depending on the goodwill of others to tell the difference between $1 and $20 bills. A judge wants the government to redesign U.S. paper money so that blind people can distinguish between bills. Leaders of two groups representing the blind offer opposing views of the ruling.

• Author: Brunson, Melanie
• Position: Brief article

Close your eyes, reach into your wallet, and pull out a piece of paper money. Can you tell what denomination the bill is without looking at it?

If you can't, you are not alone. This is what hundreds of thousands of blind people all across the United States experience on a daily basis.

Approximately 180 other countries have paper money that allows people with vision problems to tell denominations apart: either bills of different sizes or bills with some kind of "touchable" feature. The American Council of the Blind has been trying since the 1970s to get the Treasury Department to make U.S. paper currency discernible by nonvisual means, but the department has refused to address the issue.

So in 2002, the American Council of the Blind sued the Treasury Department, alleging that the government is violating its own requirement to make all federal programs, services, and activities accessible to people with disabilities. In November, a federal judge agreed. (The government is appealing.)

Still, many oppose the idea of redesigning U.S. paper currency to make it accessible to the blind. Redesigning the bills and adapting vending machines that...