Winboard for the Sight Impaired

[Dave Acevedo]

Howdy mates,

There is a release of Winboard 4.0.2 that utilized keyboard controls and voiced move announcements called Winboard for JAWS. JAWS is a screen reader. Problems exist with this release and its ICS and engine support are broken.

There is no software in existence to supply the blind with ICS server play or engine evaluation. This is a convenience for them that is long overdue. It is my hope that programmers here could modernize this code, the source for which is still available here: http://www.tim-mann.org/winboard/jaws/J ... Source.exe , and clean up these bugs and supply for the very first time Internet chess and engine evals for the blind and sight impared. There is a huge community of blind and sight impaired chess players.

Dave Acevedo

[Olivier Deville]

Howdy mates,

There is a release of Winboard 4.0.2 that utilized keyboard controls and voiced move announcements called Winboard for JAWS. JAWS is a screen reader. Problems exist with this release and its ICS and engine support are broken.

There is no software in existence to supply the blind with ICS server play or engine evaluation. This is a convenience for them that is far overdue. It is my hope that programmers here could modernize this code, the source for which is still available here: http://www.tim-mann.org/winboard/jaws/J ... Source.exe , and clean up these bugs and supply for the very first time Internet chess and engine evals for the blind and sight impared. There is a huge community of blind and sight impaired chess players.

Dave Acevedo

Hi Dave

I warmly support this appeal, because I belong to the sight inpaired team

Olivier

[Dave Acevedo]

I have a new idea how we might repair Winboard for JAWS and provide for the first time anywhere in the world functional chess software for the sight impaired.

As the problems with the program seem Winboard related, might the JAWS elements of the available source code simply be inserted into newer Winboard source?

Further the difficult issue of providing an engine evaluation to the user through the JAWS screen reader that is static and small as opposed to an entire PV that is constantly changing could possibly be solved by modifying the "Hint" functionality already inside of Winboard so that at anytime and for any side "Hint" may be called and the user presented with the best engine move.

Best Regards
Dave