I’ve landed, I’m now with computer, and my sleep patterns are nearly normal, but for my first post-holiday post I’m going to stick with the States. If you’ve ever been there and fumbled in your wallet for a dollar, only to bring out a $20 bill, it’ll have occurred to you that the various American bills are very difficult to distinguish from each other – they’re all green, and all the same size. It must be a nightmare for the blind, I mentioned to my cousin Cara in Vegas.
And guess what? Just before I left the US Treasury failed in its appeal against a ruling that its current practice is in breach of disability discrimination legislation, namely section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Here’s the judgment of the US Court of Appeals (DC Circuit), here’s the report in the New York Times, and here’s an NPR report to listen to.
Although most Americans seem comfortable with their ‘greenback’, I’ve often wondered about errors being made in small stores. I was once handed a $100 bill in change by a Puerto Rican girl in a New York deli. I was honest enough to hand it back, knowing she would most probably have been expected to make up any shortfall at the till out of her own meager wages. The look on her face told me I had been right: it was as though I’d saved her life. In general employees in the good ol’ USA have very few rights and she would have been at the mercy of the deli owner. Would that be different here if our banknotes were all more-or-less indentical?
I’m not sure we’d be any different, but I’m glad we’re ahead on this. In the modern world I think it’s amazing the Americans are still where they are.