title: Using tactile features to help functionally blind individuals denominate banknotes.
abstract: This study, which was conducted for the Bank of Canada, assessed the feasibility of presenting a raised texture feature together with a tactile denomination code on the next Canadian banknote series ($5, $10, $20, $50, and $100). Adding information accessible by hand would permit functionally blind individuals to independently denominate banknotes. In Experiment 1, 20 blindfolded, sighted university students denominated a set of 8 alternate tactile feature designs. Across the 8 design series, the proportion of correct responses never fell below .97; the mean response time per banknote ranged from 11.4 to 13.1 s. In Experiment 2, 27 functionally blind participants denominated 4 of the previous 8 candidate sets of banknotes. The proportion of correct responses never fell below .92; the corresponding mean response time per banknote ranged from 11.7 to 13.0 s. The Bank of Canada selected one of the four raised-texture designs for inclusion on its new banknote series. Other potential applications include designing haptic displays for teleoperation and virtual environment systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada. lederman@psyc.queensu.ca
authors.forename: Susan J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Lederman
authors.forename: Cheryl
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hamilton
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001766:Blindness; D002170:Canada; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009717:Numismatics; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010865:Pilot Projects; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012682:Sensory Aids; D014110:Touch