Ziyi Chai ¹ and Joshua Lai ², ¹ USA, ² California State Polytechnic University, USA

We aimed to address the lack of accessibility in chess by developing a program that integrates text-to-speech and speech recognition. The system allows users to input moves using voice commands and receive audio feedback of game states, making it helpful for players with visual or motor impairments. The design consists of a central controller to manage game logic, a speech recognizer for move input, and a history manager to track and undo moves. Designing for chess posed numerous edge cases, but we addressed them by building a well-constructed system using proper subclassing and modularity, ensuring flexibility without compromising core functionality. We tested speech recognition extensively across varied inputs, and despite occasional network issues and minor parsing errors, the system achieved very high accuracy and was able to successfully execute most commands the first time, with the remaining commands taking 2-3 more on average. The program is cheap, accessible on most devices, and simple to use.

Accessible Gaming, Speech Recognition, Text-to-Speech, Assistive Technology in Chess