Re: Accessible Board and Card Games!
Dark,
Good questions. You're right, there aren't many accessible board games - which is part of why we're doing this. Whenever we get a game, we have to figure out how to make it accessible...so why not share that knowledge (and the labor of making the necessary modifications) with the world? I guarantee it can be done - sometimes it just requires thinking outside the box. One of our favorite games is a massive fantasy adventure board game called Middle-earth Quest...the game is beautiful, and takes up about our entire dining room table. It took a lot of work, but now my wife and I play it regularly, either just the two of us, or with friends, and my gameplay experience is the same as everyone else's, except for occasionally having to ask a question about something on the board (which could be remedied with a lot more work that just isn't necessary for us).
So anyway, if you visit the shop you can see what we curre ntly offer, but I can tell you right now: we have currently listed Clue, Apples to Apples, Story Wars (a lighthearted fantasy-themed party game of making stuff up), Uno, and regular playing cards. We have also brailled our personal copy of Citadels, another fantasy card game of strategy and resource management, but haven't listed it yet.
But like I said, we're just getting started, and we're always looking for new inventory to add. So I will definitely check out Talisman and Tokyo battle and see if they could be made accessible/what work would need to be done...and if you have a specific request, you can always submit it directly through the shop. We can't make any guarantees - there are some games that will always be inaccessible...but I've found that we can make a way for almost any card or board game to be playable.
Regarding your second question - with our current listings, there hasn't been a need to have separate prin t and braille cards, because we simply braille directly on the cards. Our technique is to put identifying information in braille on the card, and then (if necessary) include supplemental information in a digital text document. So for example, in Apples to Apples, you have "noun" cards which contain a word, but then the card also has flavor text that isn't required for gameplay, but can be pretty entertaining. So we braille the word on the card, and then include a document containing the flavor text for all the cards if you want/need to reference it. This works best for games like Apples to Apples, where all players draw from a communal pile - if you had separate braille and print versions of each card, the gameplay would be broken. However, for instances where this wouldn't be an issue, we'd be open to brailling separate cards...just know that it'd drive the price up a little bit.
I'm curious - how does braille M onopoly handle the community Chest / Chance issue? You can't have two identical decks, one braille and one print, and just have the blind players draw from the braille deck, as that would give them the possibility of drawing a card that's already been drawn from the sighted deck.
Oh, that gives me an opportunity to expand on the "fully accessible" versions. So, if we were to make a braille Monopoly, we would offer two versions. One would not have braille on any of the Chance/Community Chest cards, because there is no secret information on these cards, nor is there information blind players need to reference frequently - in other words, they could draw their card and simply have a sighted player read it aloud, without in any way affecting the fairness or balance of the gameplay. However, we would also offer a fully-accessible version (more expensive because of the added time it takes to prepare), wherein these cards would be brailled so that a party of blind players could enjoy the game without any sighted help.
Hope that sufficed to answer your questions. Sorry that it was a bit rambling...honestly the specifics will vary from game to game. Feel free to ask any more questions you may have!
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