Potential Enhancements

En Parlant~ is a young project with a small team. Below are ideas we’re actively thinking about — some are well-developed proposals, others are early sketches. Nothing here is promised or scheduled, but we wanted to share where our heads are at.

If any of these ideas excite you (or if you’d use them), let us know on GitHub.

ChessMaster Teaching Plugin

A teaching layer built on top of multiplayer. A chess instructor could create annotated lesson packages, distribute them to students via access codes, and deliver live instruction through the app — with narrated commentary.

The idea is that the teacher owns their content and controls access. Payment happens outside the app (Stripe, Gumroad, direct — whatever the teacher prefers). En Parlant~ provides the delivery infrastructure, not a billing system.

Possible features include offline lesson packages (PGN bundles with metadata), relay-based content delivery with student access codes, live teaching games broadcast to connected students, and presence indicators showing when the teacher is online.

Accessibility for Blind and Visually Impaired Users

En Parlant~ already makes chess audible through TTS narration, but it’s not yet usable by blind players. A screen reader user currently can’t perceive the board, navigate the interface, or input moves without a mouse.

We have a detailed proposal for progressive accessibility improvements: ARIA labels on all controls, live announcements of moves and game events, an accessible board overlay that screen readers can navigate square by square, and a text-based move input accepting algebraic notation.

The blind chess community is active and organized internationally. If this is something you’d use, we’d especially love to hear from you.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is live today for casual, untimed games — but there’s plenty of room to grow:

• Clock integration — Synchronized time controls where each player’s clock ticks down locally and resyncs on every move.
• Lobby and matchmaking — A way to find opponents without sharing a code out-of-band.
• Ratings and ranking — Tracked ratings so you can find opponents at your level.
• Spectator mode — Let others watch a game in progress.

And More

These are the ideas with the most thought behind them, but the list isn’t closed. If you have a use case we haven’t considered — especially if you’re an instructor, a blind chess player, or someone who’d use En Parlant~ in a way we haven’t imagined — please reach out.