Alicante Spanien Tel. General secretary Hans-Gerd Schaefer Breslauer Str. The blind player uses an adapted board, with the white squares slightly lower than the black. Each piece has a peg at the bottom, which is inserted into a hole in the centre of the square on which it stands, so that it remains steady while the position is being examined manually. Also one set of pieces have small dots on the top, so that they can be distinguished from the other set.
Opponents use separate boards and call the moves to each other.
At international level, where there is no common language, the German Algebraic notation is used, and this involves learning about twenty German words. In addition, a club player may use a Braille Chess clock and a small tape recorder or Braille device for noting moves. Chess literature is available in Braille, and to a greater extent on cassette, although the choice is not as great as one would like. Many Chess computers and Chess programmes for PCs can be used successfully by blind players with the aid of a synthetic voice. Currently, e-mail is being adopted as a new and exciting medium for playing Correspondence Chess.