Video games have traditionally been rough terrain for people with disabilities, who generally find themselves in a landscape where there is a dearth of disabled peripherals. For this reason, it won’t hurt if you reply to the notification Sony on its first accessible controller heading to the PlayStation 5 as an official platform.

Codenamed Project Leonardo, Sony’s accessible controller was announced at a conference the Japanese video game giant presented last Wednesday at CES 2023. To create it, the PlayStation division joined forces with accessibility advocates such as AbleGamers, Stack Up and SpecialEffect to create configurable “split controller” layout.

The multinational company said at the Accessible Controller conference that it was “designed to address common issues faced by many players with limited motor control, including difficulty holding the controller for long periods of time, accurately pressing small groups of buttons or triggers, or positions.” your thumbs and fingers optimally on a standard controller.”

“Our team tested more than a dozen designs with accessibility experts, looking for approaches to help address the key challenges of effective driver use. Because players can customize Project Leonardo to their needs, there is no such thing as a “correct” form factor. We want to empower them to create their own configurations“.

In short, the Leonardo Project is intended to be personalized and adapted to the needs of a wide range of individuals with disabilities. The controller features 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 multiple buttons can be assigned to perform the same or two button functions in one, such as the typical pressing of the left and right rear triggers at the same time. Other options are repositioning and changing the distance between the left and right analog sticks and adjusting the orientation of the north point.

In addition to the lack of disability-friendly devices, perhaps the saddest thing is the lack of greater involvement from first-party manufacturers, namely Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Five years ago, the Redmond giant introduced the Xbox Adaptive Controller, a controller designed for use and accessibility for people with reduced mobility. Although conceptually very different from the Leonardo project, it also stood out for its extensive reconfigurable capabilities.