Hand-held denomination reader?

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I just noticed something in the new Charlton guide - a paragraph on pg 311, dealing with the Birds of Canada series, which I have copied below.

For several years the Bank of Canada has been assessing methods of making denominations of banknotes distinguishable by the blind and the visually impaired.  To assist the blind, the notes of this series were printed so that the denomination can be read by a small handheld electronic device ....

Under the Journey series (pg 336) the Charlton guide also states that an improved handheld denomination reader is being developed.

I hadn't heard of such a thing before, though I certainly knew about the braille aspects and the high-contrast numbers.  Presumably though, these handheld devices must read more than just braille (since blind people don't generally need a machine to read braille).  

Does anyone know more about these machines?  What do they actually read from the bills?  

A couple points I'd like to make...

Firstly, the raised dots on the Journey notes are not braille. They are simply raised dots. You can tell the denomination by how many groups of 6 dots, and the spacing between the groups.

The electronic readers mentioned above look at one or both of the following:

• The barcode in the lower left corner of the back of the note. This is a unique arrangement by denomination. See further below for the patterns.
• The dark black squares on the right edge of the back of the Journey notes, or the ends of the horizontal bars on the front of the Birds notes. This too has a unique arrangement by denomination.

Serial number barcodes:
[size=14]|||    ARX1234567  |    ARX1234567   $2
|| |   ENX1234567  |    ENX1234567   $5
| ||   ADX1234567  |    ADX1234567   $10
||     EIX1324567  |    EIX1234567   $20
| |    EHX1234567  |    EHX1234567   $50
|  |   AJX1234657  |    AJX1234567   $100
|      EKX1234567  |    EKX1234567   $1000[/size]

Also, these machines can be obtained from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). They are obviously only available to actual blind people, so unless you're blind, don't even bother trying to get one.