Accessibility settings are the options that fit chess to how you see, hear and move. They're gathered in the Game section of Settings.
They aren't extras. If you can't read the board, or the animations bother you, the game stops being playable.
Vision-related settings
🎨 Colour-blind friendly board: square colours tuned for players who find red-green distinctions hard.
🔠 Larger text: increases interface text size.
🔢 Board coordinates: toggle the letters and numbers along the edge. They sit outside the squares, not inside, so a piece is never hidden behind a number.
📏 Board size: scale the board up or down for your screen.
Motion and sound
🌀 Reduce motion: piece movement and transition effects are simplified — for players sensitive to motion, or simply distracted by it.
⏩ Animation speed: if you don't want to reduce motion, you can tune its speed.
🔊 Game sounds and volume: move, check and clock sounds can be switched on or off, with a separate level. Playing with sound is the easiest way to know a move arrived without watching the screen.
Move behaviour
✅ Confirm move: dropping a piece doesn't send it — you confirm first. On touchscreens this all but eliminates accidental moves.
⚡ Premove: queue your reply before your opponent moves. In bullet it buys seconds.
👑 Auto-queen: promote straight to a queen instead of choosing every time.
🖱️ Move input: drag, click or both — details in our board themes post.
Keyboard and screen readers
The interface is built to be navigable by keyboard, including a skip-to-content link, a sensible focus order, and menus that open and close from the keyboard.
Board states like whose turn it is and low time are announced to screen readers, and analysis charts and tables carry text summaries.
If you spot a gap or a bug, write to us — this is work that never really finishes.
See you in the next story.
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