After a couple of unusually warm months, winter has finally arrived to Finland. We have snow on the ground, on the trees and in my shoes! And that's the way I like my January to be. I've been reasonably busy in the past few weeks—I've judged a Pro Tour Qualifier, started planning for this year's Ropecon (The Number 1 Independent European Gaming Event That Is Not About Ropes In Any Way!), found a new judge candidate, and of course I've judged at the Planar Chaos prerelease events. At the PTQ and prerelease, I was faced with a rather unusual and somewhat sensitive issue, which I'm going to discuss in this article.

I have a local player who is visually impaired. We shall call him Joe. I'm not entirely sure whether he has some ability to see lights and shapes or whether he is totally blind, but I know that he can't read Magic cards. Joe likes to play Vintage, and recently he has been attending prereleases and other events as well.

The first comment from most people, when they hear that I had a blind player at my tournament, is that they don't know how it's possible for a blind person to play Magic at all. I don't know how a generic random blind person would manage, but this is how Joe does it: he has Braille stickers on his card sleeves, he has an assistant, and he has an excellent memory.

The stickers have a couple of Braille characters on them, abbreviations such as "FR" for Frogmite, and they are on the faces of the cards. Because the stickers make one end of the card thicker than the other, his deck can't stand up on its own, so he keeps it in, little box that is open on one side, not on the top. The box also prevents him from knocking off any extra cards while drawing. The assistant helps Joe shuffle, makes sure that he untaps everything, puts counters on things, and taps stuff properly. Joe is not the fastest player around, but he is capable of playing at an acceptable speed. He asks his opponent questions about the game state, and keeps a lot of information in his head. It is quite impressive and I know I couldn't do the same.

As a judge and tournament organizer, I'm willing to make certain special arrangements for anyone with a temporary or permanent disability. I assign a fixed table (this is easy to set up in DCI Reporter) for people who have a broken leg or who otherwise have trouble moving around. It makes everyone's life easier. I allow people who need assistants to bring one—but if they show up without one, I won't assign a judge to help them. Most of the time, I don't have an extra judge available.

When I tell other judges about Joe and his play style, they are often concerned about several things: he plays with marked cards, he receives outside assistance, and he plays slow. I was concerned about these things at first, but after watching Joe during several events (I give him the table closest to the judge table, which gives me a lot of opportunities to observe him), I've become reasonably convinced that these things are not problems. His Braille stickers are placed so that he can't touch them while shuffling without being very obvious about it. He often uses the same sleeves for several events, which I find acceptable because he can't see any markings, and his opponents can't see the deck because it's in a box.

The assistant doesn't provide any strategic advice—he just does mechanical things and calls a judge if there's a problem. If the assistant does something he shouldn't be doing, then the opponent can always call a judge. Joe's play speed is my biggest concern, but when I told him about this at the PTQ, he was able to speed up by (for example) eliminating some of the questions he keeps asking (such as "what lands do you have untapped"). It was an Extended PTQ, he played Affinity, and he made top 8. Would he be allowed to play at the Pro Tour? I have discussed this question with WotC staff, but there won't be a definitive answer until he actually qualifies.

Limited events are slightly more problematic. Deckbuilding takes more time when you can't see the cards and you have to make the Braille stickers for them. Joe doesn't play a lot of Limited, but he showed up for the Planar Chaos prerelease. He wanted to get extra time for deckbuilding.

A prerelease is a meant to be a casual event. At such an event, I would be happy to give a bit of extra time to someone who has a good reason to ask for it. However, I am not obligated to go out of my way to do this. I won't delay a tournament for just one person. If I'm renting a site from 9 am to 8 pm, I can't be there at 8:30 am to let someone start early. If I have extra staff, I can have them watch Joe build his deck while other players register, but if I don't have extra staff, I can't have him do it unsupervised. I'll do what I can—if I was running an event with multiple flights (which is not feasible in my market), I could put Joe in a later flight and let him start building a bit early. If I was going to be performing a deck swap, I could preregister Joe's deck and let him start building while the other players register product.

For the Planar Chaos prerelease, I didn't know that Joe would be playing, so I couldn't even consider making special arrangements for him. This event did not use decklists, and Joe got the same amount of deck building time as everyone else, but he had to accomplish more than the other players in those 45 minutes.

He started by having his assistant read all the rare cards to him. Then he seemed to just pick a color and ask his assistant to read all the cards. At some point, he abandoned all but two colors, and asked the assistant to reread the cards from those colors. He would say "yes" or "no", and the "yes" cards would get sleeved. After cutting the deck down to 40 cards, he would start making stickers with his little portable Braille sticker maker. I think he also had his basic lands pre-sleeved and stickered.

Later in the event, Joe admitted to me that he didn't have enough time to properly read all the cards. It feels a bit unfair, but he is making a choice when he decides to attend a tournament, and he has to accept his own limitations. I'm pretty sure Joe will never be able to participate in a draft tournament, or at least he hasn't yet figured out a way to do so. This also means that he will never play Nationals, since half of that event is draft. He can play in Constructed PTQs, since he doesn't need extra time in those, but he probably can't do Limited PTQs.

In addition to providing a little extra assistance to players with disabilities, you should make sure that your events have a friendly atmosphere and that the other players treat the disabled player with respect. My players are quite used to Joe being around, so they usually don't make any comments about his situation. However, if your players feel that the disabled person can't play at with an acceptable speed or style, investigate the matter. The same rules apply to Joe as to any other player. I expect him to be clear about any actions he performs, to keep his permanents clearly laid out, and to not abuse the system.

If you meet a disabled player who would like to participate in your tournaments, there's no reason to just refuse them immediately. Talk to the person and find out how they manage to play around their disability. Find out what special needs they have. Tell them what you expect from them and they can decide whether it's something they can deal with. A blind Magic player won't think about participating in a tournament unless he or she has, like Joe, already figured out some tools to help him or her.

That's all from me this week. Thanks for reading!

Johanna Virtanen
DCI Level 3 Judge, Finland
flame (at) bore dot org
flame- on #mtgjudge (Efnet)