The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) proposes to bring out a mobile app to aid visually impaired persons in identifying Indian currency notes.
As per RBI, the Intaglio printing-based identification marks assist visually impaired in identifying denominations of banknotes of Rs 100 and above.
RBI has stated its intentions on developing an application for supporting the visually impaired in the identification of denominations in its Developmental Regulatory Policies release in June 2018.
In a statement issued by the central bank,
“The application should be able to identify the denomination of legal tender banknotes of Mahatma Gandhi Series and Mahatma Gandhi (New) series by capturing the image of the notes placed in front of a mobile camera or scrolled across it.”
The proposition by RBI on the app requirements
- As per the proposition, the mobile app should be enabled to identify the banknote denomination in 2 seconds or less by adding that the app should indeed work in an offline mode without internet or wifi connections.
- The mobile app should be with multi-lingual support with audio notification. Expected at least to support Hindi and English language.
- Ability to inform and indicate the banknote through any non-sonic method such as vibration mode suitable for hearing impaired.
- Generate and store the records of the activities for identification of denomination of Indian banknotes.
As the per the survey on 31 March 2018, there were nearly 102 billion banknotes in circulation with a value of Rs 18 lakh crore. There are approximately 80 lakh blind people in the country who seems to be benefitting from the initiative of the RBI.
