Another stupid question, kind of Options

[Fat2death]

What is the point of the braille at the drive up atm machines? Only in America. (Or not?)

[Gigi]

From The Economic Naturalist:

When Ben Bernanke and I described the example about drive-up cashpoint keypads with Braille dots...somebody sent me an angry e-mail saying the the real reason for the dots is that disabilities legislation requires them...There is a requirement that all cashpoint keypads have Braille dots, even at drive-up locations. Having Braille dots on drive-up machines might even be useful on rare occasions, such as when a blind person visits a drive-up machine in a taxi and does not want to reveal his PIN number to the driver.

^ That would be a reasonable answer, except that I still think that blind, or even visually-impaired people very, very rarely use drive-up machines.

It's not so much a question of having Braille dots because it's RIGHT, but because it's not more costly to do (in fact, it may be more costly to NOT have Braille dots on the machine). Look at it from an economic standpoint. ATM manufacturers probably have only one type of machine that makes the keypads, which include Braille dots. It would be too costly to order a new part for a non-Braille dot keypad and produce it for specific drive-up locations. Read on...

I urged him to think about the circumstances under which the regulation was adopted. If it had been significantly more costly to require Braille dots on the drive-up machines, would the rule have been enacted? Almost certainly not. The fact is that adding them was costless. And since the dots cause no harm and might occasionally be of use, regulators might well find it advantageous to require them, thereby enabling themselves to say, at the end of the year, that they had done something useful.

It would be naive to think that all the things that happen in the world that seem morally right are done with the right intentions. Sometimes it is just convenient, and makes you look better to boot.

Moral of the day: Not only is treating everyone the same way morally responsible, it's also cheaper! Win-win.