Friday, 19 July 2013

Sony PS4 Giant Controller Accessibility


Mark Cerny giant PS4 Dual-Shock to help developers implement better accessibility for younger players.

I'm getting the impression that Sony's grasp of the needs of disabled players remains non-existent. Each Playstation generation sees additional complexity added to their controllers (see the video above and imagine how someone with Cerebral Palsy might get on with it). This is disabling an ever widening net of people who have alternative access needs. The controllers would be fine, if there was a push to offer support for simpler control schemes. There isn't.

Interestingly, Mark Cerny (author of classic track-ball game Marble Madness and key PS4 system master-mind) recently spoke enthusiastically of a giant PS4 controller being used to get across the barriers typically faced by young players who could not reach the shoulder buttons. This was handed to the developers of "Knack" which aims to be Sony's "on-ramp [game] to the world of console gaming". Is this how far we've travelled? Atari worked that out in 1983 with their Kids Controller. If this is how far accessibility has progressed at a console developer level, then I truly shake my head in despair. Pitiful. What about all the disabled players out there, Sony?


Sony PS4 Game Accessibility: Poster Walking with Dinosaurs.

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