I´m not a player, but as I understand it chess can be played as a totally non-visual game, where the movments of the pieces correspond with the given letter and number of the square, A-1, B-4, F-6, etc. It´s not total mathamatics, but you don´t need a board to play. Also I might imagine that individuals that haven´t been blind all their lives, and have a referance point (i.e. know what a board looks like) might play by ´visualizing´ the board in their minds.

Blind players use a different kind of chessboard. Half of the squares on the board are raised (this corresponds to one of the colors) and pieces with a type of Braille are used. When a person with sight looks at the board, all the pieces appear flat. The blind person can then feel the chessboard and the pieces, using the height of the squares to differentiate them, and can feel the location of the pieces. Every year there is a tournament for blind chess-players in the US, the United States Blind Championship. This is different to blindfold chess, in which top (sighted) chess-players play without sight of the board. Their abilities of visualization and memory are good enough to retain the locations of all the pieces and visualize diagonals, ranks, and files, and grandmasters can play through entire chess games without a chessboard.

Well answered by idoun1. Some additional bits:- Blind people also have special clocks - where they can feel how much time is left. The clock is normally sat between the two boards... see later. (No glass)... The clock faces away from them - so they can put their hand over the top and feel the time... So as a non blind person - I cna see the times normally. When I have played a blind person - I have used a normal board and they have used their special board. Every time we do a move, I tell thme what the move was. The blind person also had a flip book, eahc page with the numbers in order going up in braille. Everytime black did a move, he turned the page so that he knew what move we were on. (Have to do 36 moves in 1 1/4 hours). It goes without saying that the blind person does not do touch a piece-move-a-piece. The non blind person does though. The first time I played a blind person - I used their board. This was a big mistake as I found it difficult to concentrate with their hands constantly going all over the board. (I won but ....). So I strongly recommend you use a normal board in addition to their board. For recording, the blind person used a dictaphone after each move.