i’ll be honest, when Sony announced its accessibility controller “Project Leonardo” at CES in January 2023, I was underwhelmed. I thought it was too small for disabled gamers like me. I didn’t understand how a player was supposed to reach the “sundial” of buttons. It was fated to be another company’s benevolent but failed attempt at inclusion. Then I tried the review unit Sony sent me.
Project Leonardo has become the Access Controller and will retail at $89.99 starting December 6. (“Leonardo”—for Leonardo Da Vinci—would have been a way cooler name than the clinical “Access Controller.”) Sony worked with nonprofits AbleGamers, SpecialEffect, Stack-Up, and other disability experts to create the Access Controller. Unfortunately, it only works with the PlayStation 5 and cannot utilize PS Remote Play. Using the Access Controller for PC gaming or daily computing tasks would have been a nice bonus.
The Access Controller comes with 23 rounded, curved, and flat button caps, as well as two thumbstick caps and a nob for a joystick. I would have liked the thumbsticks/joystick to screw in or be more firm, in case I wholly gripped and mashed it like in a fighting game. The button caps are held by magnets and are released by the press of a latch, but this never caused me difficulty despite being a quadriplegic with stiff fingers on my right hand and ataxia, or uncontrollability, in my left.
