Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Canadian currency tactile feature
The Canadian currency tactile feature is a feature on current Canadian banknotes. Bills in the "Canadian Journey" series have a tactile feature to indicate denomination in the upper right corner of the face side of the bill, as suggested by Canadian National Institute for the Blind administrator Bruno Thériault. This tactile feature is a series of raised dots; it does not use standard Braille because the Canadian Federal Government, in consultation with the blind and visually impaired, decided a different system is more accessible. The principal designer was Dr. Susan Lederman, a professor of Psychology at Queen's University.[1]
The currency denomination must be recognized easily, and standard Braille was deemed too sensitive. Thus Canadian currency uses a system based only on full blocks of Braille cells (6 dots). The denomination is expressed by the number and (only for the $100 bill) arrangement of the blocks.