In this warm and encouraging episode of Remarkable World Commentary, host Donna J. Jodhan, herself a blind advocate and chess lover, sits down with Voldi Gailans, Chairman of the UK’s Braille Chess Association, in a conversation that doubles as an invitation. Voldi traces his lifelong relationship with the game: first meeting the pieces as a boy at a Latvian social club, learning the moves on a pegged tactile board at boarding school with no strategy to guide him, and finding formal coaching only late in life, an experience that fuels his mission to spare today’s beginners those lost years. Along the way he dismantles the “mystique” that chess is only for clever people, explains how much richer the game becomes once you learn ideas rather than just moves, and reflects on patience, resilience, and learning to lose gracefully as lessons that carry straight over into life.
Leave a CommentTurning policy into progress for people with disabilities.