Please click here if you do not see a Nav Frame at left

FAQ 7s. "I need tiles for a sight-impaired player. Any help?"

BIG NUMBERS:

There are four ways you could go:

1. Some vendors carries large-size sets suitable for the visually impaired. See vendors list in FAQ 4a. Look on the KMA site and check out the other vendors too.

2. Sets with fairly large indices manufactured by "KFC" are available through the Mah Jongg Maven (see FAQ 4a).

3. You can probably make suitable tiles yourself! A variety of letter/number stickers are available at office supply stores and hardware stores.
You only need the larger Western characters on the craks and winds, assuming your sight-impaired player can see the dots and bams OK (she shouldn't try to read the little Western characters, just look at the dots and sticks on the tiles - and she can probably tell the dragons apart OK too).

4. Another way to go would be to buy two Asian sets (without any Western indices) and have large numbers engraved by Arkay Engravers (they are listed in... you guessed it... FAQ 4a). You have to buy two sets, since those sets never contain more than 148 tiles and you need 152 for American mah-jongg. Or you could get the very large Hong Kong style tiles for even more enhanced ease of reading. Big racks may or may not be available for those big tiles - see the vendors in, you know, FAQ 4a.

From left to right: Japanese, American, Hong Kong, and Vietnamese tiles. From FAQ 7a

BRAILLE:

I have seen Braille tiles at the mah-jongg museum in Japan. I believe that the way these tiles were made was by the use of clear stick-on Braille characters (the original engraved characters are still visible through the stick-ons). There is no company manufacturing Braille mah-jongg tiles that I know of, and I don't know where to buy them. I think stickers (labels) are the way to go. I don't know where you can obtain Braille labels offhand, but I'm sure you can find them by asking around at your local Association for the Blind - or on the internet by using Google.

COLOR-BLINDNESS

>From: Lynne Rosenberg
>Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 4:21 AM
>Subject: Mah-Jongg Q+A
>My mah-jongg question or comment is:
>My husband is color blind (red/green).  Do you have any suggestions to make playing this game any easier?  Any manufacturer that identifies the tiles somehow?
>Thanks!

Hi Lynne, you wrote:

Do you have any suggestions to make playing this game any easier [for people who are color-blind]?
Yes. You didn't say which kind of mah-jongg you and your husband play. (Your having a Jewish last name doesn't necessarily mean that you play American mah-jongg.) And you didn't mention whether your mah-jongg set (assuming you have one) has Chinese character dragon tiles or pictorial "dragon" dragon tiles. It matters, because the color-blindness problem is easier to solve for American mah-jongg than for certain Asian variants (including British mah-jongg and Wright-Patterson). I'm just going to discuss here some suggestions assuming you play American mah-jongg. Obviously, the tips I give you also assume you're going to make modifications to your own set, and that you'll always play with your own set.

Discerning Red Dragon from Green Dragon

Your set might have (A) Chinese character dragon tiles, or it might have (B) tiles depicting dragon images.

So your husband might be able to simply memorize which one is red, and which one is green, in all the cases above except the same-looking dragons. But if he prefers, he could:
1. Get letter stickers (from office supply or arts/crafts shops) and mark them "R" and "G" or...
2. Using a 1/16" drill bit, make a 1/32" deep hole in the upper right corner of the red dragons, and fill with red nail polish or paint. If he's a craftsman with a garage workshop, he can set up a rig on his drill press to make sure that the little hole is identically placed on each of the red dragons.

Discerning the red suit (Craks) from the green suit (Bams)

Your husband needs to just remember that the green dragons go with the Bams, and the red dragons go with Craks. If he prefers, he could drill a shallow hole in the upper right corner of the Craks, and fill with red nail polish or paint, to match the red dragon treatment as in suggestion 2 above.

And that's the extent of it. Someone who's color-blind and plays American mah-jongg only needs to be able to discern the red dragons from the green dragons, and to associate those dragons with the appropriate suits. I can't help him with marking the card - he'll have to come up with his own system (maybe an underline under all green symbols, and an overline over all red symbols). If you and your husband play an Asian variant that uses the hand "All Green," I think he can figure out a solution based on what I've set forth above, to mark the "green-only" bams (2, 3, 4, 6, 8).

Any manufacturer that identifies the tiles somehow?
Not for American mah-jongg. Take a look at FAQ 7e above left - sets exist with the words "red" and "green" on those dragons, but I can't tell you exactly where to go and buy one. And before you ask me how to convert an Asian set for the American game, my recommendation is that you buy two sets (if you can find a vendor that sells sets so marked), and sticker the jokers. FAQs 7q & 7r highlight the problem. The "where to buy mah-jongg sets" FAQ is FAQ 7k.

May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper  /  トム·スローパー   /   湯姆 斯洛珀  /  탐 슬로퍼
MJ溌Sloperama中com
Los Angeles, CA (USA)
March 10, 2008
Author of "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," the definitive book on mah-jongg East & West. Available at bookstores, BN.com, and Amazon.com.

I hope you found this information helpful. I'd love to hear about solutions you've found - please send your comments to
MJ溌Sloperama中com - Tom

© 2008 Tom Sloper. All rights reserved. May not be reprinted without written permission.