[blindlaw] American currency and other accessibility issues.

[booboobuttken at bellsouth.net]

My experiences with the touchscreen ATMs is that I was told they were
accessible with special made headsets.  The problem I encountered was anyone
within the bank to ever come up with one of the headsets.

When taking the commuter rail system in Florida, I too had a problem of the
ticket machines being accessible.  I was not about to give personal
information to a stranger and boarded without a ticket.  I was glad to find
out that once on board without a ticket, I was provided with an envelope to
mail in the fare, so that too was accommodated.  I don't know if other rail
systems do the same.

Personally I think there will always be accessibility issues that carry
different personal opinions.  How something  is accommodated will also carry
different personal opinions.  I think as the courts rule on cases, no matter
how silly some people might think they are, there will hopefully end up
being more guidelines to what constitutes a reasonable accommodation and
will take some of the personal preferences out of the picture.  I try to
pick my battles wisely, but that still has had some people say that a fight
of mine was not merit based.  Others have pushed me to file a claim which I
did not choose to pursue because of the lack of importance to myself or what
would be gained by pursuing such a claim, even though I thought the claim
would have had just merit .  One case that I have pending now, the NFB did
not think it was impact worthy for them to get involved to do an amicus
brief to the appellate court, yet a national advocacy group did.  It is a
case of first impression in Florida that is very important to me and many
others and, regardless of who thinks the claim is merit worthy or not, based
on their personal preferences, it is a very important issue to me and, no
matter what the outcome, it will help set precedence for future guide dog
users and their accessibility rights.  Whether anyone else would have gone
to the lengths I did to rectify the situation where I had been discriminated
would have been a personal choice.

I guess that all I am really trying to say is that no matter how silly a
case may seem to others, my hope is that something will be defined and
guidance set, within the verdict and opinion of the case, that will help
with other issues before the court so that we can start having a more
uniform understanding of reasonable accommodations and accessibility for all
individual cases.

Just my opinion.
Annette
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joshua E. Saunders" <joshuasaunders at sbcglobal.net>
To: <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2006 8:24 PM
Subject: [blindlaw] American currency and other accessibility issues.


> I have been listening to the debate on both sides of the issue, with
regards
> to currency accessibility.  The Federation has a point in that there could
> be a backlash if the public comes to resent blind people for demanding too
> many accommodations.  At the same time I don't think we should simply make
> the assumption that that is the attitude most cited people will have.
Cited
> people who I've talked to have seen it as a positive thing.  It's possible
> that because I am blind they feel like they have to respond in this way.
I
> haven't gotten any sense of deceptiveness in people's responses however.
>
>
>
> Since we have been talking about accessibility issues I wanted to raise
one
> which I have been thinking about.  Touch screens are ubiquitous parts of
the
> ATM machines at supermarkets.  There also present as a part of many other
> common machines such as the automatic ticket machines for Amtra I found
> myself in a very uncomfortable situation when I had to hand my credit card
> to a total stranger in order to have my previously purchased ticket
> extracted from the machine.  Now I simply do not by my tickets in advance,
> so that I don't have to use the machine.  k.  I wanted people 's thoughts
on
> whether we should work to have this technology made more accessible.  To
me
> it seems just as important as making web sites accessible, because of how
> common the technology has become.,
>
>


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