I’m Isaac, a blind board gamer from Australia. I have been playing board games since the start of 2020 and much much earlier if you count games like chess and scrabble. As I am totally blind however, every game I have played has had to be accessible so I could properly play it. For some games, like the aforementioned chess and scrabble, there are already accessible versions available to be purchased though generally at an exorbitant price. For others like Battleship, Zombie Dice or Santorini, the games are pretty much fully accessible by default.

Most board games however need to be modified to enable me to play them. For some games like skull the modifications are very simple, simply poking a small hole in one of the skull cards is enough to enable me to play the game on a level with any other sighted player. Others like Settlers of Catan, Tigress and Euphrates or Scythe however take far more work. While some resources exist to help with this process such as 64 Ounce Games games who provide accessibility kits for board games, they are limited in what games they cover meaning that for most games, I must make modifications myself, or with the aid of friends.

This blog details my process for making a range of board games such as the ones already mentioned and many others accessible for myself. I hope it can be hopeful for other blind people getting into board gaming or those that have already been gaming for a long time but are after ideas to make more games accessible.

Some notes

I am totally blind so many of my modifications are likely irrelevant for those with partial vision where simply making components more visually distinguishable is often enough to make a game accessible. I also am a fluent braille user and make use of braille labels to make many games accessible, while not always necessary, most of my modifications will incorporate braille and for those that don’t use braille, alternatives will need to be worked out independently such as using tactile symbols instead. I also run a blind board gamers discord server that can be joined with the following link: https://discord.gg/NpkDvrRj5V.