BANK OF ENGLAND £50 NOTE TEXTURE FEATURES

The Bank of England said it will add four clusters of raised dots to the top-left corner of its new £50 note, meaning all the notes in circulation in the U.K. will be distinguishable to people who are blind or partially sighted.

The £50 note—worth roughly $69—is the highest-value bill in circulation in the U.K. and was the last denomination to be redesigned for printing onto plastic polymer material.

The U.K. central bank is the latest national authority to make all its bank notes accessible to people who are blind or partially sighted with the addition of tactile markers. Accessibility advocates have been pressing the U.S. Treasury to make similar changes to the design of its paper currency, which they say makes it difficult for people with no or little vision to distinguish between bills.

“Because all our bank notes essentially look and feel the same, it’s just not possible to identify them without some sort of external assistance,” said Aaron Preece, the editor in chief of AccessWorld, an online technology magazine published by the American Foundation for the Blind.

The Bank of England, working with the Royal National Institute of Blind People, added the dots to its £10 note in 2017 and to its £20 bill last year. The £5 note is now the only bill that isn’t printed with textured elements, but people can identify it by the lack of them, said Sarah John, the chief cashier of the Bank of England.

The new features were enabled by the switch to printing currency on polymer, which holds the shape of the raised bumps much better than paper, Ms. John said.

Similar tactile markers appear on other currencies including Australian dollars, Canadian dollars and the euro.

In the U.S., however, bills not only lack textured markers but are similar in color and shape. Other countries’ bank notes often have differing colors and contrasts, making it easier to tell denominations apart.

To read the complete article (subscription required), see:
Bank of England’s Textured Bills Help Blind People Tell Them Apart (https://www.wsj.com/articles/bank-of-englands-textured-bills-help-blind-people-tell-them-apart-11616772483)

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