:spock: I have always wanted to know... how does a blind person accept money for goods and services. For instance, you may see someone that is blind selling flowers, they are given a $20 bill by a customer, they give back change, but how do they know what change to give back, or even that the customer is not really giving them $5 instead.
I knew a guy in Argentina who was blind and he told me that they have a trick in touching the bills and they know by that if it's a 20 dollar bill or a 1 dollar bill. Something in the surface of the money make them to know which one is it.
yeah i was told that people who were born blind can tell by touching the money what it is, but i mean with all the new 20's comming out i hope that they don't change it so that the blind don't have to change the way they count money. good question though.
This topic has really sent me on a search for the answer. When I was in grade school there was a blind girl that was in most of my classes. She said that they folded the money certain ways. When getting change back from someone, they have to take them at their word.
But~ I wanted to be sure that this is what ALL the blind are taught, and I finally found it!
This is from: National Federation of the Blind. https://www.nfb.org/
QUOTE |
How does a blind person identify money? Coins such as nickels, pennies, dimes, and quarters are easy to tell apart. They all are different sizes, and quarters and dimes have ridges around them, while pennies and nickels are smooth. There are many ways that paper money-like one, five, ten, or twenty dollar bills-can be identified. Some blind people like to keep different bills in separate places in their wallets, especially if it is a larger bill that they perhaps do not often carry with them. The most common way to tell paper money apart is to fold the bills in different ways. Each person will have his or her own way of folding them; there is no standard for everyone. Maybe a five dollar bill is folded in half the long way, and a ten dollar bill is folded in half the short way. Or maybe the ten is folded twice. A one dollar bill might be folded one way or not folded at all. Or maybe a twenty dollar bill is folded in fourths or not at all. Everyone uses his or her own methods. When we get money back from someone else, we ask which bill is which and then fold it. |
So this rules out the belief that the blind can somehow detect what money is given to them as change. This means we either must have a very honest society or the blind only shops in areas where they will not be cheated?