How to insert ROTN into your content

by Rosario Turco

ROTN is Rot Notation, an ASCII text format to describe chess positions accessible to screen readers like NVDA.

To avoid interrupting reading, the ROTN position should not be placed in the text. It should be placed in a separate file and linked.

1. Workflow for Blogs, Websites and Markdown

We use an HTML template to be filled in once for each position.

Step 1: Download the template
Download template-html
It is a base file. Unzip it and you get the html file.

Step 2: Fill in and Rename
Open the file with Notepad. Paste your position into the textarea.
Save it immediately with a descriptive name. Examples: carlsen-nakamura-2025-34.html or italy-2026-stalemate.html
Important: never leave the name as template.html

Edit the data in the file.

Step 3: Upload the file to your website folder and Link it in Markdown
Upload the file to your website folder.
In your article write like this: White to move and wins in 2. See and Copy ROTN position: Carlsen vs Nakamura m.34 When clicked, a simple page opens with 1 textarea and 1 “Copy” button. The user copies and returns to the article. NVDA reads everything correctly.

2. Workflow for eBook ePub and Accessible PDF

In eBooks javascript may not work. We use .txt attachments

Step 1: Download and Fill the template
Download template-ebook
Unzip it, fill in the data and save it with a name different from the template and that is descriptive.
Example name: ch3-pos2.rotn.txt

Step 2: Insert it into the eBook
Attach the file as a resource in the ePub. Note: The following example link will not open but it is to help you understand how to proceed

Step 3: Link it in the text Let’s analyze the position. Download ROTN file The reader downloads and opens the .txt with NVDA.

3. Important note on IT and EN

The tag order is fixed: T;V;B;N;M;P; for Italian
The tag order is fixed: T;V;W;B;M;P; for English

The V tag sets the language:
V:B; or V:N; = Italian. So use B: and N:
V:W; or V:B; = English. So use W: and B:

4. Content of the HTML template to download

The full code is in the file you downloaded in step 1. Open it with Notepad and fill in only the textarea.