Well, while I'm absolutely familiar with, ----- and would totally support more Vi players of tabletop rpg games ala D&d (I once contact the rnib here in England about producing accessible rule books and dice before I knew about the computer available versions), I'm less certain about the accessibility of strategical boardgames.

While it might take work, a tactile board utilizing raised lines and braille lables would be fairly symple to make (my mum and I did plenty of more symple board games like mouse trap when i was litle), I'm not exactly certain of how a blind player would get enough overview information of where the units, ----- and as I understand it in war games there are many units, ---- were on the board, what ranges, obstacles or other features of the board applied etc.

I admit, my spacial logic is pretty terrible, ---- so I have trouble with the grid based games unless I can have a physical representation of the board wich I could have my fingers on as in an adapted chess board.

Even if the problem of sticking the pieces to the board so a blind player could feel them could be solved, ----- say with velcrow on the bases of pieces and board, I'm less certain as to how translatable the information would be for a Vi player, ---- for instance questions of distance, line of sight, range of attack etc.

Of course, I admit I don't know half as much about tabletop war games as i do about tabletop rp, so if I've over estimated anything just let me know.

Well, the magnets and foil idea may work, ---- though I do remember a magnetic chess board we had when i was litle, which had the miner proble that you could push pieces along the magnetic surfice of the squares and thus out of position if you weren't careful.

Smaller numbers of detailed units might be a good idea, ---- assuming all the questions of angle etc could be solved.

I would've thought, if you could mark out the hexagons, ---- say with pipe cleaners as you suggest, battletech would be one of the easier board games to play being as, ----- if I interpreted the rules correctly there are only four units per player, --- thus making the board play easier.

If it's just a matter of recording a large amount of information for the statistics and damage of each unit, ---- I really don't see why you can't just use a laptop or desktop with appropriate word documents as I do in tabletop games for a character sheet.

You could even have the advantage of one sheet per unit so as to make things easier.

Unless I've missed something, I would've thought recording textual information would've been the easy part.

Well, that doesn't sound too bad if a table or spreadsheet could be used for each unit so as to make finding individual information easier.

for making the map, earlier you suggested using phome sections stuck together with velcrow. Rather than creating one large folding board, How about creating a number of single hexis in various textures and terrain types made out of hexagonal pieces of phome which could stick together. That way, you could have any configuration of terrain you wanted and play just about any map.

While it'd be probably more time consuming to make many hexagons this way it would have lots of adaptability advantages.

How much variation would there be il elevation betwene the different hexes? If it's several standard measurements such as, you could simply cut thicker or thinner hexagons out of the phome as required. If it's numerical, you could use braille poste it notes of the values which could be torn off as required, ---- it's for these sorts of instant labeling situations that braille actually does stil have it's uses.

The texture and lable would probably be fine if you used a standard sticky pad and just wrote braille lables of hights as necessary. Finding the basic numbers 1-9 and zero in braille shouldn't bee too much trouble, ---- they're also the same as the letters a-j, even if you don't generally learn braille fully (I'll admit, learnign grade 2 braille from scratch is a bit of an undertaking given the short hand).

If post it lables were used, it'd simply be a matter of writing correct information on the lables and sticking them to the hexes.

Of course, the best solution would be if the megamec access projects sorts itself out, ----- but we'll have to wait for that I think.