Chinese Chess for the Visually Impaired

Abstract

Since there is limited resource and support given to the visually impaired in the society. Although there are specially designed Chinese chess sets and online Chinese chess platform for the blind, they still have to sit in front of each other and play the game at the same time. Thus, this project aims to develop an iOS app for people with different seeing difficulties to play the Chinese chess game at anytime and anywhere. The application is built with a simple layout of the Chinese chessboard, but the game situation can be announced by the built-in accessibility, VoiceOver in iOS device. When an item is being tapped once, the VoiceOver will speak out the location and movement of the pieces. And hence, people with different vision capabilities would be able to "see" all the chess pieces on the screen. Other than the visualization of the game situation, the app will be able to connect with the Game Center service. Visually impaired can battle with their people they do not know and even normal users over the Internet. With the use of the turn-based match, users can continue the game when it is their turn. Compared to the traditional Chinese chess game playing, this would be a great improvement on the visualization and convenience for the visually impaired to play the Chinese chess game.