PlayStation Levels Up Their Accessibility Options With New Controller

Welcome to the table,

I’m going to tell you a silly story about video games and accessibility that actually happened to me and my friends back in the early 2000s.

There was a knock on the door in the middle of the night. The knock was so loud and intense that it echoed over the torrential downpour going on outside. I grabbed my crutches and staggered through the 2am gloom to the door of my chaotic and often messy early 20’s apartment.

I flung open the door and standing in the rain, dripping wet and holding a duffle bag and a plastic guitar with brightly colored buttons was my friend Corry. His glasses caught the shine of dancing lighting as his unhinged grin inhabited an otherwise featureless face.

He shoved the plastic guitar and duffle bag full of cords and a PS2 into my hand and said “Take this or I will fail my classes.”

The lightning forked through the sky, and there was a roll of thunder (it rolled a 4)… and Cory vanished back into the rain-slick gloom.

He showed back up the next weekend. Apparently, he had run off for dramatic effect. It was indeed effective. Cory’s love for theatrics aside, those fake music games became a huge part of our lives. Cory did not fail but if I had not been an art major whose main focus was painting and installation art, I probably would have. We drank, we had a weekly D&D game, and we played fake musical instruments to weird covers of popular songs while people partied around us.

That was just what we did with our time. We downloaded every DLC pack and every song, bought every new guitar that came out even if it was a limited edition, and I think we would have kept playing to this day if we did not run into a snag when the drum kit came out and you needed working feet to make the foot pedal for the kick drum to work.

Something about not being able to drum after looking forward to it for so long caused a ripple in our whole little fake band thing, and Saint Conan took an indefinite hiatus from the fake music scene. All because there was not an accessible option for the controller. We collectively spent so much money on all of these fake music bits and bobbles, and the whole money-draining enterprise was brought low because one of us (there were four, by the way) could not use the drums*.

So when Playstation’s new accessible controller came across my desk, I got really excited because I know firsthand what it is like to want to play a game, escape for a little while, or enjoy something with friends and not be able to do so fully because there is just not an option that works for your needs.

In an effort to empower play, PlayStation is introducing the Access Controller, a versatile controller kit that can be customized to meet players’ diverse needs, designed in close collaboration with the accessibility community to help players with disabilities play more comfortably for longer.

The fact this focuses on comfort for longer play really speaks to me, as I know a lot of players with various disabilities will play for short bursts until things get uncomfortable and then wait it out until they can comfortably return to the game later. These breaks coupled with the normal online cycle tend to lead to spoilers for gaming experiences long before they can encounter certain bosses or uncover certain game secrets. So something that will allow for easier marathon-based play is a really beautiful consideration from the PlayStation team.

Some of the initially reported available features are swappable buttons and stick caps. These allow you to configure the Access Controller’s button layout to suit your range of mobility and switch between the included stick caps to find the shape/texture that works best for you.

There will also be an adjustable stick length feature that allows the user to lengthen or shorten the control stick’s extension arm, then lock it down at their ideal length for comfort and convenience.

You can also use up two Access Controllers together as a single virtual controller, or combine one or two Access Controllers with a DualSense or DualSense Edge wireless controller to add features like haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, motion sensor, and touchpad swipe to your setup.

Configurable buttons also allow the user to map button inputs so the commands they need are exactly where they want them. You can set button presses to toggle commands on/off or to serve as a single-press input, or disable buttons altogether to stop accidental pressing. You can even map two commands to a single button for more user-friendly play.

All of these features are a huge move forward in allowing more players to come to the game, and for that, I’m absolutely living right now. I will report more as I learn more but expect updates as they come down from PlayStation.

Until next time, Accessibility is so important!

*It may be easy to ask “Why not just keep playing and not play the drums Anton?”

I will counter with a question. Do you want to live in your house but not use your bathroom? It’s the same concept. If I can’t enjoy all of it but I still have to pay for all of it that seems like a broken system to me and I was lucky enough to have friends who felt the same way.