City Councilman James Vacca (council.nyc.gov)

Paying for your cab fare with a credit card seems simple enough, but for the visually impaired, it can be a lot more difficult. New York's yellow cabs just weren't equipped with the proper software enhancements to help the visually impaired--until now.

Lighthouse International, an organization dedicated to overcoming vision impairment through rehabilitation, education, research and advocacy, teamed up with Creative Mobile Technologies and city council member James Vacca to announce software enhancements to New York's taxis to optimize the payment experience for the visually impaired.

According to the press release:

CMT created adaptive software that will allow blind or visually impaired taxi passengers to hear the fare changing in regular intervals during the trip and facilitate all aspects of the credit card or cash payment functions upon reaching their destination, including selection of payment options, verification of fare and selection of tip percentages.

Former New York Governor David Patterson helped debut the newly revamped taxi TVs at City Hall today, quipping, "This is the first time I'll be able to use a credit card by myself in a taxi cab—and I was the Governor of New York!"

The new software will begin to hit the 13,000 New York taxis run by Creative Mobile Technologies within the next few weeks.