Video games have traditionally been a rough terrain for people with disabilities, who generally find themselves in a landscape where handicapped peripherals are in short supply. Because of that, it doesn’t hurt to echo the announcement by Sony of its first accessible controller, which is aimed at PlayStation 5 as an official platform.
Sony’s accessible controller has been baptized with the code name of Project Leonardo and was announced at the conference that the Japanese video game giant gave last Wednesday at CES 2023. For its creation, the PlayStation division has joined forces with organizations accessibility advocates like AbleGamers, Stack Up, and SpecialEffect to create a configurable “split controller” layout.
The multinational said at the conference on the accessible controller that it has been “designed to address common challenges faced by many gamers with limited motor control, including difficulty holding a controller for long periods of time, accurately pressing small groups of buttons or triggers or position your thumbs and fingers optimally on a standard controller.”
“Our team tested more than a dozen designs with accessibility experts, looking for approaches that would help address key challenges to effective controller use. Because gamers can customize Project Leonardo to their needs, there is no such thing as a ‘correct’ form factor. We want to empower them so that they can create their own configurations”.
In short, Project Leonardo is intended to be personalized and adapted to meet the needs of a wide variety of individuals with disabilities. The controller includes interchangeable components to create a wide variety of controller layouts based on the player’s range of motion, strength, and physical needs.
There are also a variety of different buttons that can be programmed for any supported function and it is possible to assign multiple buttons to do the same or two button functions in one, such as the typical action of pressing the left and right rear triggers at the same time. time. Other possibilities are to reposition and change the distance between the left and right analog sticks and adapt the orientation of the north point.
Apart from the scarcity of devices adapted for people with disabilities, possibly the saddest thing is the lack of greater involvement on the part of first party manufacturers, that is, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. The Redmond giant presented the Xbox Adaptive Controller five years ago, a controller designed for the use and accessibility of people with reduced mobility. Although conceptually very different from Project Leonardo, it also stood out for its extensive capabilities to be reconfigured.
