Go resources for the blind

Post any resources for blind people playing Go. I have a history family history of late adulthood blindness and I’m trying to learn the resources I’ll need if/when that happens while I am still at least partially sighted.

there is apparently at least one amateur player who is blind. Kim Hoogenraad. she also plays chess

her solution is to use a special second board with rough and smooth pins inserted to keep track of the moves. it’s apparently a custom built thing

from https://senseis.xmp.net/?BlindGo

btw fuck sensei’s library generally, try to ignore their rampant sexism and i try to steer clear of them as a rule, but here we are

Someone needs to fork Sensei’s Library.

I remember it being not great before I even had self awareness.

it’s the whole redditish nerd culture nonsense that’s become so rampant since the 80s

it’s especially grating as a woman to have to constantly deal with toxicity from people in every one of my niche interests lol. edit: i say “people” but i mean men

i wrote a post about it on my blog actually lol https://applebapsgaming.com/2020/06/25/fuck-senseis-library/

but even apart from the pages i link there, on the blind go page i linked you there’s a guy in the comments who says he made a board like Ms. Hoogenraad’s for a friend of his and he made the pieces a certain shape because it “felt more female” and on the word “female” he links to the playing strength and gender page

like, what the fuck is wrong with people

I think the point where I decided that Sensi’s Library was beyond redemption was the Nuclear Tesuji page. It just screamed “Go is a manly game for manly men who self destruct and harm others and do stupid shit because testosterone”.

It’s like celebrating this story from chess history

Another famous loser, Aaron Nimzowitsch. At a lighting chess tournament in Berlin, he said out loud what everyone has at one time felt. Instead of quietly turning over his king, Nimzo leapt onto his chair and bellowed across the tournament hall: “Why must I lose to this idiot?”

This just screams mentally unbalanced, like why would you want that to be the face of your interests?

(In all of my time playing chess in college and high school, and even on the Internet after, I have never felt like I was losing to an idiot. If I lost, it was because of some deficiency in my play that I can learn from, not because my opponent “got lucky”.)

yeah oof lmao. that’s classic scrub behavior

the nihon kiin apparently makes go equipment for the blind. the lines are instead raised rails, and the stones have dots on top for Black, and snap onto the rails snugly

i have no idea how you’d import one of these tho

Oh no, looks like I’m going to have to go to Japan and visit the Nihon Ki-in.

oh nooooooo

It would be nice to make some sort of accessible Go app though. There’s a SmartGo Books app that has Go books, so maybe I should see how accessible it is.

I’m thinking of a goban app that gives tactile (for vision and auditory impairment) and auditory (for only vision impaired) based on your finger position. Could be interesting.

When I was doing some computer vision research back during my undergrad I remember playing around with some code that would take a picture of a goban and build a position diagram based on the picture. It would be cool if you could hold up your phone, take a picture of a goban, get a diagram, and then be able to swipe over it for tactile/auditory feedback.

that’s a really cool idea!