India launches chess software for visually challenged

Wednesday, 11 October 2006, 19:30 IST
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Panaji: India is hosting a global chess-for-the-blind meet in Goa and has just launched a software that helps the visually impaired chess players. Called 'Talk 64', this software has been launched at the 11th Individual World Chess Championship for the Blind 2006, currently underway at Varca in South Goa. Talk 64 is being called the "first-of-its-kind" chess software and its promoters see it as a boon for all chess players, which has been specially designed for the visually challenged. The GTL Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of GTL Ltd, has developed the software. "Talk 64 is the only fully featured chess software in the world, which has complete speech support, speaking out every single move played on the chessboard," said a statement released here to mark the software's release. A "chatter" feature has been provided, where the software interacts with the player via comments, which give the player the feeling that he or she is playing with another person. Talk 64 has provided keyboard shortcuts for almost all features, making it very easy for the visually challenged players to access the features of the software. All features a user would love to have in a chess software have been provided and the software performance is comparable to that of several leading products in this field. Talk 64 also helps a player enhance his or her skills by providing an analysis feature. Games can be saved and resumed and later analysed as well. The voice, speed and pitch of the speech can be customised according to the user's preferences and sighted players can use the software without speech as well. Currently, full speech is supported in English and German. Talk 64 supports the engine plug-in architecture, under which a user can download freely available chess engines supporting the Winboard protocol and plug them in to the software easily. It also supports a synthesiser plug-in architecture, something, which allows the user to easily plug-in various speech synthesisers supporting the Microsoft Speech API 5.1, to get the benefit of various voices and voice quality. For self-learning, a database of over 100,000 games from International Tournaments as well as games of World Champions have been provided. According to the promoters, all the various opening traps with their sub-variations, along with middle and end games, from both sides (black and white) have been provided for analysis and learning. They say this "would greatly enhance chess playing skills". Indian national chess-for-the-blind network AICFB general secretary Charudatta Jadhav told IANS that the software would be priced at 500 in India and $20 overseas. Meanwhile, the world chess championships for the blind started in Goa with three world champions. Participants include Serbian Milenko Cabarkapa playing in his 11 world chess championships for the blind. There are some 45 rated players taking part. Goa Chief Minister Pratapsing Rane inaugurated the 11th World Chess Championships for the Blind making the first move Monday. This is the first time the championships are held in India. There will be nine rounds in all.
Source: IANS