A question gnaws at me. Why are the buttons on those drive-up banking machines identified with braille? –Vox Populi, Baltimore
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You’re now thinking: Boy, those federal bureaucrats sure are stupid. Don’t they realize a blind person isn’t going to be able to drive to a drive-up ATM? Cecil reserves judgment on the stupidity question, but even if the feds weren’t smart enough to notice this little problem on their own, there were plenty of people who pointed it out for them before the rule was finalized. The American Bankers Association, for one, asked that drive-up machines be exempt from the visually impaired requirement, arguing that a blind person using a drive-up ATM would have to be a passenger, which meant the driver of the vehicle could help with the transaction.
Your question does point to a more serious problem, which other readers have also raised: How the hell is a blind person supposed to use any kind of ATM? Whether the keypad numbers are identified with braille or not, there isn’t any braille translation of the on-screen instructions–without which the machine is useless. Maybe, you’re thinking, the problem isn’t the brainless bureaucrats, but the brainless (or cynical) bankers and ATM builders, who figure a pretense of accessibility will get them off the hook.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
