KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Thursday that, except the currency note of Rs10, all other currency notes had specific features which could help visually impaired persons in recognising their genuineness and denominations.

The SBP said it had noted that visually impaired persons were finding it difficult to recognise and distinguish amongst different currency notes.

All currency notes of Rs20 and above had specific features which could help these persons in identifying their genuineness and distinguishing between different denominations. They contain Braille features on the front side that help in determining their denomination. For this purpose, raised dots and small horizontal lines are printed on the left bottom corner just above the banknote serial number. This feature makes banknote denominations easily distinguishable by rubbing the thumb against these raised features. The Braille features in each denomination appear in this manner: Rs20 has one line, Rs50 two lines and Rs100 has three lines while other higher denomination notes have dots as Braille feature. Specifically, Rs500 note has one dot, Rs1000 two dots, and Rs5,000 three dots.

According to the press release, all Braille features on currency notes of all denominations of Rs20 and above are printed through Intaglio process, due to which they appear raised and on the front side of the note only. Thus, a visually impaired person can easily infer the denomination of the banknotes by feeling the raised printing as well as its genuineness.

It says all Pakistani currency notes have denomination-wise tiered sizing. Each currency note has the same width of 65mm whereas lengthwise, each banknote is exactly 8mm longer than the preceding denomination. The Rs5,000 note is 48mm longer than the lowest denomination currency note of Rs10.

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2019