(London) Large buttons arranged in a circle and a joystick on one side: Sony is marketing from December a new PlayStation controller designed to make gaming easier for people with disabilities, an issue long neglected by the sector.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see able-bodied people using it,” says Jeremy Lecerf, known as Gyzmo. Sitting in a wheelchair, this French specialist in video games and disabilities was invited by Sony to London to test this new device which shakes up the design of traditional controllers.
Suffering from myopathy, he is present as an ambassador for the French association HandiGamer, which represents players with disabilities.
The new controller “is extremely well thought out”, because the company has sought to make it accessible to people with disabilities which can be very different.
“It’s nice to see that the (video game) industry is really getting started” on the issue of accessibility, judges Mr. Lecerf, 39, while testing the “access” controller on Stray, a video game from adventure in which the player plays a cat. “More and more publishers are playing the game,” he says.
Two-thirds of gamers with disabilities face barriers or problems playing, and 40% have purchased video games they were unable to use due to poor accessibility, according to a 2021 report by Scope, the UK Disability Equality Association.
But the issue of accessibility is now being highlighted by major studios, publishers and manufacturers.
An essential effort, according to Jeremy Lecerf. “Video games allowed me to have a life that approached normality, to have a social life,” he says. It is an “opening to the world”.
Taking into account accessibility issues “is a trend that we see throughout the sector, it is not limited to PlayStation” agrees Alvin Daniel, project manager at Sony.
“We wanted it not to be up to the player to adapt to the controller, but for the controller to adapt to the player,” he says. But this was not an easy task, “because no two people experience disability in exactly the same way.”
The new device can be placed on a table or attached to a support and oriented in all directions.
Each button can change shape with magnetic caps, to make them easier to press, or grab, and the user can assign any function to them. You can combine several controllers, “access” or classic.
The controller is “a little big and the buttons are difficult to press”, but “you can attach external buttons to it, which is a good thing for me”, judges Melanie Eilert, a German “gamer” who is also a consultant in accessibility and suffers from spinal muscular atrophy.
Ms. Eilert, who can only play with her right hand, came with her own colorful buttons. There are many peripherals on the market developed by third-party manufacturers, adapted to players’ disabilities, sometimes activated by a movement of the mouth or by breathing for example.
There is not enough perspective, according to her, to compare the new PlayStation controller with its competitor, launched five years ago by Microsoft on Xbox, which also allows the connection of external devices.
But the design of this type of device is crucial for her. “I played when I was a kid. Then (due to the progression of the disease) I couldn’t anymore for 15 years. I had to wait a very long time to be able to start again, thanks to the emergence of suitable solutions, she says.
At Sony, the project started in 2018 and the design took time “because we were given a blank sheet of paper,” says Alvin Daniel. Several different designs were tested on three continents, with the help of associations and experts, before arriving at the finished product.
The controller will be available on December 6 for a suggested retail price of $119.99 in Canada.
