Visually Impaired

[PaulSK]

I recently ‘lost’ one of my partners. He is still living, but was forced to move away and we can’t play together. His eyesight is failing and he can’t see the cards well enough to continue. We accommodated him at the table – no bidding boxes, and we would call our cards as we played them – but he told me it was just getting too difficult.

 

Can BBO be modified to help people like him? Certainly the program can be modified to ‘speak’; it already makes noises. It could also:

 

1. Announce the conditions. "Board 749, neither side vul, West dealer. You are South"

2. Read off the cards in your hand. "You have: Spades, King, ten, …."

3. Say the bids as they are made.

4. Announce the dummy when it appears. "Dummy has: Spades, Ace, Jack,……"

5. Say the cards as they are played. "West plays the ten of diamonds."

 

I think that part would be very easy. Now we need some rudimentary speech-recognition software grafted onto it. All you need to recognize from a player is:

 

1. A bid.

2. A card played.

3. "Review"

4. "Dummy" -- request a restatement of dummy's (remaining) cards.

5. "My hand" -- request a restatement of my (remaining) cards.

 

And a few more, I suppose. We would have to find a way to handle insufficient or illegal bids, revokes, illegal plays (you don't have that card), explanations of bids (and requests for them), and some others that I haven't thought of yet.

 

Is anything like this feasible? I can think of one potential BBO member who would certainly benefit.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

 

have a look at the following thread:

http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=18851

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

[PaulSK]

Good. Thank you for this info. I had the suspicion that I was not the first to raise this issue. I'll send any further ideas to that thread.