NFB and ACB Conference Justification

Conference Justifications (NFB and ACB)

Over the past two years the annual National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind conventions provided an excellent forum for BEP personnel to obtain feedback directly from blind and visually impaired attendees regarding variations of raised tactile features being considered for use as a mechanism for denominating U.S. banknotes by touch.  This effort on the part of the BEP is in response to the District Court ruling in favor of the American Council for the Blind, et al, which requires the Secretary of the Treasury to provide “meaningful access” to U.S. currency. 

Development of a raised tactile feature has been on-going since the Court ruling in 2008.  The anecdotal information BEP has obtained at previous NFB and ACB conferences regarding the effectiveness of the different tactile feature concepts that have been presented to blind participants has been invaluable in identifying specific characteristics of the tactile feature concepts that lend themselves to additional development.

Once again, this year, the BEP has produced a set of sample concepts that will be evaluated by blind participants at the NFB and the ACB conventions.  The NFB convention is July 1-5, 2013, and the ACB convention runs July 6-11, 2013. The test protocol that will be used at these conventions was developed by Westat, Inc. under contract with the BEP, and is the very same protocol that was successfully employed at the California State University at Northridge (CSUN) Technology and Disabilities Conference. This protocol was developed to ensure the method of presenting the various samples to the blind participants and collecting the associated data and comments regarding the samples evaluated provides the most relevant and accurate feedback and data for use by the BEP in refining their tactile feature development effort for the future.

Type of Intake	Estimated Number of Respondents	Estimated Number of Intakes per Respondent	Average Burden Hours per Intake	Estimated Total Burden Hours Requested
In-Person Questions	250	1	20 – 30 minutes	125 hrs.