Determined to make change in American currency

	Eliza Cooper '08

Eliza Cooper '08 isn't one to complain.

She happens to be blind, yet she uses public transportation, interned at a newspaper and is searching for an internship in publishing or marketing in Boston or Chicago. But she does have one very large complaint: American currency is not accessible to the blind.

Cooper is asking friends, family and members of her home and college communities to support her in asking the United States Congress to rectify that.

To know which bills to use when paying for a product or service, Cooper folds each denomination a certain way — tens are folded horizontally, for example, and she keeps ones flat.

The system is time-consuming and inefficient. "It works, but it is annoying because I'll get change and I won't have time to fold it," said Cooper, a psychology-based human relations major from Pasadena, Calif. "I'll have to go home and wait for someone I trust to be able to tell me which bill is which. And a few people I know have stories about being cheated, which is just horrible."

The most frustrating part, Cooper says, is that the United States has made many changes to the currency in the past few years, but has not made any effort to make it accessible to the visually impaired. In fact, according to the American Council of the Blind (ACB), of the more than 180 nations that issue paper currency, only the United States makes no effort to make its paper currency accessible. The ACB is suing the U.S. Department of the Treasury, claiming that by failing to provide print currency in usable format, the government is violating the Vocational Rehabilitation Act.

It was through the ACB that Cooper heard about a petition to the U.S. Congress that demands money be accessible to all visually impaired people. She signed the petition and then began to send it to friends.

"I' ve never really gotten behind a cause like this at all, but I just thought that if I can spread the word to people I know, it might help," Cooper said. She has sent e-mails to friends, family and acquaintances asking them to sign the petition, and even inspired her former editor at the Pasadena Star-News to write an opinion piece asking the community to back her cause.

Cooper admits, however, that it is sad that a petition is even necessary at all. "It's ridiculous. I don't understand why it has even had to go this far. If other countries have done it, why can't we?"

To read and sign the petition, visit www.money4all.info.