Chit Chat Mobile Creates Smartphone Bundles for the Visually Impaired

Prepaid specialist Chit Chat Mobile has created a non-profit arm, dubbed Chit Chat’s Accessible Reliable Economical Services, or CCARES. The organization merges together technology, hands-on customer service and low-cost unlimited wireless plans for a series of need-based service programs reaching out to customers nationwide directly and via partners.

CCARES’ first program is designed to assist the visually impaired. Chit Chat Mobile will offer unlimited plans starting at $9.99 per month and a low-cost smartphone pre-loaded with two helpful applications: the free-of-charge Equal Eyes and Voice Assist.

Equal Eyes is designed for Android devices and allows smartphones to speak to users, helping them to navigate by touch. Unlike other applications, Equal Eyes also assists in downloading and deploying applications and MP3s, searching for videos, reading a Web site, identifying currency denominations, naming colors and identifying e-commerce items via the product’s UPC.

Voice Assist meanwhile creates a fully accessible phone for visually impaired people, giving them the ability to place a call verbally or manually, and enabling talking caller ID, call log, phone book and keyboard, and verbal retrieval and response to e-mail.

Chit Chat Mobile said that it realized the need for mobile solutions in the visually impaired community when a dealer in Texas, George Zavala, began a project to seek out alternatives for the iPhone. Being a visually impaired individual himself, Zavala discovered that only expensive phones like the iPhone supported relevant apps, and set out to develop an Android app.

“Now we have better and more affordable options,” explained Zavala. “Before Chit Chat Mobile, the visually impaired had one option, the iPhone. Now, you can go to any Chit Chat Mobile store or the website (chitchatmobile.com), get a budget friendly smart phone/plan and easily start using your phone right away.”

Chit Chat Mobile plans to keep growing CCARES with more outreach programs in future. “We want to take care of our customers and give back to the communities that are in need,” said James Gentry, COO. “If we can make people’s lives easier by helping them save money and implement new technologies we will do whatever is possible.”