26-08-2014, 07:36 PM
Ian,
I don't totally understand what your written. My experience of blind players in England is that they don't normally turn up without an assistant and I cannot think that I have ever seen a deaf player with an assistant. I think Alex MacFarlane would say that in a FIDE rated event if the correct pairing was for a blind player to play a deaf player then this would have to stand. Clearly, the tournament would have to find an assistant for the blind player (to make their moves). The deaf player would be at a disadvantage to an able bodied player because they could not hear what the blind player was saying and couldn't monitor that the correct move was being played. However, I don't think it would be reasonable for the deaf player to expect the tournament to provide an assistant to communicate the blind player's speech to them. Whilst the deaf player is at a minor disadvantage to an able bodied counterpart the remedial action would be disproportional to the disadvantage suffered - how much would it cost to employ someone to be at the board for five hours? I would have thought 99.99% of people would accept this as common sense. How do you write the rules/guidelines to cover this and every other relatively unlikely scenario? Maybe you just say something very general in terms of protecting the rights of disabled players, hence my one guideline suggestion above.
I don't totally understand what your written. My experience of blind players in England is that they don't normally turn up without an assistant and I cannot think that I have ever seen a deaf player with an assistant. I think Alex MacFarlane would say that in a FIDE rated event if the correct pairing was for a blind player to play a deaf player then this would have to stand. Clearly, the tournament would have to find an assistant for the blind player (to make their moves). The deaf player would be at a disadvantage to an able bodied player because they could not hear what the blind player was saying and couldn't monitor that the correct move was being played. However, I don't think it would be reasonable for the deaf player to expect the tournament to provide an assistant to communicate the blind player's speech to them. Whilst the deaf player is at a minor disadvantage to an able bodied counterpart the remedial action would be disproportional to the disadvantage suffered - how much would it cost to employ someone to be at the board for five hours? I would have thought 99.99% of people would accept this as common sense. How do you write the rules/guidelines to cover this and every other relatively unlikely scenario? Maybe you just say something very general in terms of protecting the rights of disabled players, hence my one guideline suggestion above.