Help for the Visually Impaired

[John in the Sun]

Hi

 

I played in a game with a player who has a severe visual handicap. Unfortunately he is so blind that it takes him a long time to even find his call (many of which were routine passes). I have a few suggestions:

 

1. Carnegie Mellon University has released into the public domain "world class speech (recognition) components", called Sphinx. There is no restriction against commercial use or redistribution of the engine. The Sphinx engine could be integrated into the Bridge Base software.

 

2. An option could be added to allow a partner or opponent to control a visually impaired players bids. Then an opponent could talk to the player on the phone and make all of those routine passes quickly, for example.

 

I realize either of these suggestions would entail major changes to the BBO software. Does anyone have any better ideas?

 

Thanks

[inquiry]

BBO has a number of thing for the visually impaired

 

One is keyboard entry for bids. On the "AT the table" tab found on the options menu, is the check box to allow the keyboard to enter bids. The software already has speech recognition built in that will call out bids and cards played as well as comments made by people at the table.

 

Hope that helps.

[Rain]

Can he see any cards at all?

 

I have a good BBO pal who is legally blind, but can still play. He has a big monitor + display resolution settings -> set to 600x800

 

This makes things very big and more easily visible.

 

Alternatively, if he has resolution 1080x768, choose "big cards" (user options -> at a table -> big cards + big )

 

I recommend method (1), cards are much bigger that way + everything on computer is much bigger, suitable for him.

[fred]

There is a group of blind players associated with the Rotary Club (in particular its Italian chapter) who use BBO on a regular basis.

 

They use a piece of software/hardware named JAWS that can be used to read what is on the BBO screen and to speak elements out loud.

 

A couple of years ago I added some features to BBO as a result of requests from the Italian Rotary Club people (mostly involving BBO-generated speech for various bridge events).

 

I can't find the contact information for the appropriate people at the Rotary Club. I suspect you can track them down via a web search and an e-mail or 2.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[John in the Sun]

Thanks for all the help!

 

Just to make sure we're all talking about the same thing, BBO does have text-to-speech, not speech recognition.

 

A solution that I have used in the past is two monitors and an appropriate video card. It's possible to display the bidding box on one monitor (with zoom) and the cards on the other monitor. I must admit I had problems with this setup though; it crashed more than I could stand.

 

Thanks for the Rotary Club lead; if I contact them I'll post the info here.

 

Still, it would be very cool to incorporate speech recognition:

"Alert". "5 Spades and 4 Hearts 6-9 HCP".

"2H".

[John in the Sun]

The difference between monitors and LCD TV's has been shrinking. Monitors however, cost another 50-200% more than TV's, and in many cases very large monitors are not available.

 

I recently purchased a 37'' Samsung LCD TV for $999 (yes, it's a lot). 37 inches diagonal is about the smallest size TV you can find that supports 1920x1080 resolution (Hi Def). I thought 1920x1080 would be clearer than 1366×768, wich is common for televisions smaller that about 42''. It had a VGA connection, the normal 15 pin D-sub, but I understand that recent video cards support HDMI connections.

 

Anyway, I configured the TV as 800x600, 75 Hz, 4:3 ratio. There is about 4 inches of the screen on either side that isn't used, but my usable screen is 2 feet wide and 1 1/2 feet tall! I can NOW see the cards, bidding, and chat, something I could never do before.

 

It's awesome, I wish I had done this sooner.

[pescetom]

I have a blind friend who plays bridge quite well with braille cards, but would also like to play online. Do you know any way a totally blind person can play bridge online (even if only with 3 robots). He is very computer savvy using software that reads his computer screen, but the software doesn’t do well with bridge notation. Can you help.

 

I too have a totally blind friend in a very similar situation.

Would be curious to know what has changed in the last 13 years.

[ARBC MSCB]

I am interested to know if there are any (totally) blind Bridge players playing on BBO.

I read the post on this thread by Fred Gitelman a few years ago, referring to the Italian Rotary Club but I found nothing more on the web.

I have asked Freedom Scientific (JAWS) the same question but without success.

Does anyone know if the technology yet exists for blind players to play Bridge online?

[0 carbon]

It would be very nice for all if BBO could, if setting chosen, announce bids(& alerts) and plays and claims(with text) in at least English.

[pescetom]

I am interested to know if there are any (totally) blind Bridge players playing on BBO.

I read the post on this thread by Fred Gitelman a few years ago, referring to the Italian Rotary Club but I found nothing more on the web.

I have asked Freedom Scientific (JAWS) the same question but without success.

Does anyone know if the technology yet exists for blind players to play Bridge online?

 

 

The technology necessary for a minimal solution (English language voice + keyboard) has existed for many years now.

There is even a popular card game platform for the blind (almost all games but bridge), based on an android-braille tablet.

 

As you can see from this thread, I first asked BBO about this 3 years ago.

The blind player in my club is still waiting and is of course the only one who cannot play during lockdown :(

[johnallen]

My wife has vision issues and sometimes mixes up hearts and diamonds when they are adjacent.

 

It would be quite helpful if the suits were four different colours (purple hearts, green clubs) as on some sites. Perhaps this could be a user option.

 

Thank you.

Allen Woolfrey

[pescetom]

My wife has vision issues and sometimes mixes up hearts and diamonds when they are adjacent.

 

It would be quite helpful if the suits were four different colours (purple hearts, green clubs) as on some sites. Perhaps this could be a user option.

 

Allowing people to chose their own colours would be a useful option, also suggested many times here.

 

But a viable solution for blind people requires more and is overdue even if hard work.

These days companies are not evaluated only in financial terms.

[stanmaz]

My wife has vision issues and sometimes mixes up hearts and diamonds when they are adjacent.

 

It would be quite helpful if the suits were four different colours (purple hearts, green clubs) as on some sites. Perhaps this could be a user option.

 

Thank you.

Allen Woolfrey

If you wish a large bidding box, green clubs and orange diamonds like this :

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/odbdc6d9eh4gjtr/modified_bidding_box.png?dl=0

 

you can modify the user interface in few simple steps :

 

- install the BBOalert browser extension (accept proposed default settings)

 

Chrome :

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bboalert/bjgihidachainhhhilkeemegdhehnlcf

 

Firefox :

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bboalert/

 

- select and copy to the clipboard the code below

 

//BBOalert

//Javascript,https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stanmaz/BBOalert/master/Scripts/stanmazLib.js

//Script,onDataLoad,stanmazLib.HOVER_BBOALERT_TAB(true);

//Script,onAnyMutation,stanmazLib.CARD_COLORS(true);

//Script,onAnyMutation,stanmazLib.DEAL_TOOLBAR_RIGHT();

//Script,onAnyMutation,stanmazLib.REMOVE_ICONS_FROM_TABS();

//Script,onAnyMutation,stanmazLib.LARGE_BIDDING_BOX(true);

 

- start BBO

- press "Import" button on the BBOalert tab

 

Customization of the user interface is one of many features of BBOalert. See the project page :

 

https://github.com/stanmaz/BBOalert

 

If you have any questions : stanmaz.git@gmail.com

[stanmaz]

It would be very nice for all if BBO could, if setting chosen, announce bids(& alerts) and plays and claims(with text) in at least English.

There is an excellent Chrome extension "BBO Visual Assist" :

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bbo-visual-assist/kdknilcahppjpicfclgaenphlcdjkbcm?hl=en-GB

 

Home page :

 

https://warwickshire.vision/how-we-can-help/interactive-technology-service/it-articles/bbo-visual-assist/

 

The only issue I have discovered is the speech rate which is too high.

[johnlambe]

Hopefully the speech rate on BBO Visual Assist is no longer an issue; there was an update to google chrome which just seemed to speed everything up.

 

The latest version can now reads out dummy's card.

 

I developed the extension to assist my visually impaired partner who is still able to use a mouse so haven't investigated keyboard shortcuts. The speech recognition is for Chats and Self-Alerts but needs to be enabled by clicking on one of the microphone symbols as this is "best practice" for privacy but it should be possible to enable it using a keyboard shortcut.

 

If you do detect any problems with the extension just email me using the contact details registered on the Chrome Web Store.

[johnlambe]

I've now added voice commands to BBO Visual Assist. Let me know of any problems through the chrome web store.

[pescetom]

I'm confused by your phrase 'still able to use a mouse'. Does this mean that the user must still have some sight, or can she be completely blind?

[johnlambe]

My partner is able to move the mouse albeit rather slowly. However, he finds it difficult to determine the number of cards in a suit and to read individual cards so the original extension was tailored to assist with those issues. Speech recognition was added as typing self-alerts and chat messages was also not easy but he still had to move the mouse to the appropriate microphone symbol. The latest update allows the player to use voice commands to play a set of boards without needing to move the mouse (you press the F1 key to start speech recognition) so it might be possible for a blind person to play a set of boards once they've joined a table. Try the extension as it's free and provide feedback.