The next six weeks will present many difficulties for vision impaired people in Ireland and across Euroland as they try to cope with old and new currencies at the same time.

The National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) anticipates that the greatest difficulty will be experienced in separating the new Euro coins from the Irish coinage, while also trying to learn by touch the denomination of each of the new coins.

"We hope that they will be assisted in the task by the plastic ‘cashtest’ guides distributed to the over 6,000 people on our register" said Patricia Byrne, Euro Project Coordinator with NCBI. "It is a simple but effective device to help vision impaired people with the learning needs posed by the new coins."

The guides allow for the positioning of the coins on a tapering groove that arrests the passage of coins against a mark which tells the user the denomination with a braille symbol and a tactile marking. The ‘cashtest’ was funded by the European Central Bank and was distributed throughout Euroland by the national organisations for vision impaired people in the twelve member states.

NCBI has been working with the Euro Changeover Board of Ireland (ECBI) for over two years to ensure that all of its information material was available in accessible formats for vision impaired people - large print, Braille and on tape. "We are fortunate to have had a healthy working relationship with the Euro Changeover Board" said Des Kenny, Chief Executive of the NCBI. The Changeover Board also supported the costs incurred by the NCBI in running training sessions for vision impaired people in all counties in the second half of 2001.

Funded also by the ECBI were talking Euro converters, similar to those distributed to households in the Republic. The Talking Euro Converters were sent to all vision impaired people before Christmas.

Vision Impaired people and their national and European umbrella agencies have played a major part in the selection of coin sizes and identifying tactile features at a European level. The European Central Bank also accepted the representations of vision impaired people who lobbied for graduated sizes in notes rather than the American style of one, uniform sized note.

The Vision impaired people of Ireland were given a role in testing the first proto type coins and notes over three years ago. Chief Executive of the National Council for the Blind of Ireland, Des Kenny, believes that the level of consultation will pay off in the medium and long terms but there will be frustrations in the short-term when the old and new currencies are in circulation.