Yesterday, AT&T announced its new Text Accessibility Plan (TAP) for iPhone. The new plan was developed for the deaf, the hard of hearing, or for people with a speech disability and/or hearing loss, the official AT&T report reveals. The plan was designed with input from the community.

This iPhone version of the TAP plan is $40.00 per month* and includes unlimited SMS messages, unlimited data usage (email and web), $0.40 per minute pay-per-use voice, and visual VoiceMail.

Disability certification forms are available from AT&T's official webpage, as customers first need to qualify for this plan in order to benefit from its offerings. The pdf version of the form is available right here. Note that the Text Accessibility Plan (TAP) plan is only available with the iPhone. No word on whether they're considering extending it to other cell phones or smartphones either.

AT&T assures future customers that they will need to follow the regular iPhone activation procedures, should they opt for the iPhone TAP plan. Once the Apple iPhone is activated via iTunes, the customer may contact AT&T's National Center for Customers with Disabilities to change his/her plan to the TAP plan for iPhone. Once the customer is accepted, TAP then replaces the normal iPhone rates.

AT&T advises future customers to "carefully review the Plan Terms, which explain the limitations of [their] service. Service is not available at all times in all places," the provider of both local and long distance telephone services explains. Therefore, users will need to check Map and Coverage Limitations.

*In addition to the monthly cost of the rate plan and any selected features, AT&T imposes the following charges: a Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee of up to $1.25 to help defray its cost incurred in complying with obligations and charges imposed by State and Federal telecom regulations, a gross receipts surcharge, and State and Federal Universal Service Charges. These fees are not taxes or government-required charges. Taxes and other fees also apply, AT&T notes.