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2023 is finally coming to a close, and as is tradition here on this channel we’re taking some time in late December to look back on everything that happened in video game accessibility this past year.
It’s a classic end of year recap, aiming to catch you up on a year’s worth of developments in the video game accessibility space in a pretty short amount of time.
While I’m making an effort to highlight as many moments and games as I can in this video, there will undoubtedly be things that I miss. The video game accessibility space is growing every year, and living with ADHD I might simply have forgotten something that’s really awesome that happened this year due to having kinda funky brain chemistry.
If I missed something awesome and accessible, that’s great. Let me know down in the comments, I want to know about stuff tthat I either missed or forgot because my brain doesn’t always work.
So here’s a look back on 2023 in video game accessibility.
Announcement of Project Leonardo
The first episode of Access-Ability that I published at the start of 2023 was a look forward to the accessibility support that I wanted to see the video game industry standardise in the year ahead. That video needed to be edited at the last moment, because one section of the script was me wishing that PlayStation would, in 2023, announce some kind of official support for an accessibility controller on PlayStation 5.
In the two day window between recording and posting that video, PlayStation kicked off the year by announcing their own proprietary accessibility controller for the console, at the time codenamed Project Leonardo.
PlayStation shared a lot of specific information about their new controller right out of the gate, showcasing the controller’s unique design formed of a circular ring of customisable buttons, with a built in custom analogue stick to one side, and a limited number of 3.5mm input ports for external devices.
While the device wouldn’t be released until nearly the end of 2023, the announcement itself was significant. It signified that Xbox was no longer the de facto console of choice for gamers with mobility disabilities, and opened up PlayStation’s first party library to be playable for the first time by many kinds of disabled gamers.
Additionally, for better or worse, PlayStation’s decision to go with a radically different design than that of the Xbox Adaptive Controller suggested that the device wouldn’t simply be mimicking what already worked in the gaming accessibility space. A variety of different styles of accessibility controller opens up more options for more types of players, and that was exciting to see.
With this announcement, the video game industry had crossed an accessibility hurdle. With the Xbox Adaptive Controller, Hori Flex, and PlayStation’s new device, all three major home consoles would have access to an officially licensed accessibility controller by the end of the year. Sure, Nintendo’s was made by a third party, but on paper this meant that you could purchase any major game console and have an option for more accessible play, which would have seemed unbelievable just a few short years prior.
While it was still a year from officially releasing as the PS5 Access Controller, and we will discuss the device in more detail later, the announcement itself marked a major step forward in gaming accessibility, and was a really significant way to start the year.
Hi-Fi Rush
Surprise released during an Xbox Showcase in late January, Hi-Fi Rush is a music rhythm character action game in which you play as Chai, a man who gets an iPod Touch accidentally implanted into his chest, which grants him the power to see and feel music flowing through the world. He’s labelled as a defect by the ruling class, and goes on a musical adventure to try and overthrow an equally musically inclined series of over the top boss fights.
Hi-Fi Rush was one of my favourite games released in 2023, and given the game’s surprise release status, it was a pleasant surprise to see the game’s fairly robust accessibility settings support at launch.
The game featured customisable subtitles, colour alteration options for colourblind players, multiple difficulty modes, and options to reduce the need for multiple or varied inputs in combat.
Players could use the Auto Action setting to press a single button on the beat in combat to execute an optimal attack combo, or use the Single Key Rhythm Optimiser setting to ensure that no in-game actions required two buttons to be simultaneously pressed.
Lastly, and perhaps most impressively, Hi-Fi Rush had some really creative ideas about rhythm visualisation. Players could turn on an optional beat visualiser at the bottom of the screen, but this was often not needed. Elements of the game world regularly pulsed and moved in time with the beat, and your floating robot cat companion could be customised to show a regular beat visualiser near the player during combat, making following the beat via visual cues impressively viable.
Hi-Fi rush’s release was a surprise in many regards, very much including the game’s accessibility support options.
PS VR2 – Rez Infinite Eye Tracking
In late February 2023, PlayStation released the PSVR 2, a high resolution VR headset for the PS5 which used cameras on the outside of the headset to track your position and motion controls, and tracked player eye movements to increase visual resolution where the player was actively looking, while lowering the resolution elsewhere to improve performance.
While there were a number of really interesting titles that made use of the PSVR 2, such as Before Your Eyes using eye tracking to jump forward in time through a life any time you blinked, the accessibility highlight of the launch period was, in my opinion, the PSVR 2 port of Rez Infinite.
Rez Infinite is a first person on rails shooter, where you fire projectiles at chunky polygonal incoming enemies. The PSVR 2 port allowed players to use eye tracking to control their aiming reticle, making it so that using just your eyes and a single button, you could target and fire at incoming ships without the use of an analogue stick to aim.
While gameplay was for the most part possible without neck movement, there were occasional segments where an enemy would appear to one side of the player, requiring a brief turn of the head.
The PSVR 2 isn’t without its accessibility concerns and issues. Most software won’t let you lie down and set the ceiling to be your “looking forward” position for example, and the eye tracking software doesn’t always seem to work properly if it can’t detect two eyes consistently, but the tech did support some creative gameplay mechanics, which were notable as proof of concept for there being a mass market appeal for controlling video games using eye tracking technology.
Eye tracking technology has been made use of by disabled gamers for years, but this is the first time that I can think of where a consumer product for a home console has really sort of made that available to people, and that feels like a really exiciting step forward.
Brok the InvestiGator Patches in Accessibility Post Release
Back in 2022, a 2D point and click adventure game called Brok the InvestiGator was released which, true to its name, features as its protagonist an investigator alligator, trying to provide for his teenage step son.
In March 2023, the game saw a surprise update which patched in a number of accessibility features, most notably including a series of accessibility updates designed to make the game more playable by blind gamers, developed in consultation with a blind gaming accessibility specialist.
The new support features included audio descriptions of characters, cutscenes, and locations, as well as text to speech for highlighted item descriptions, redesigned puzzles for blind players, and audio cues for side scrolling combat encounters.
While it’s always preferable that a game releases with accessibility support in place on day one, the next best thing is an update like this that overhauls accessibility down the line. Any developer who takes the time to update their game post release to make it more accessible is worthy of praise, and Brok the InvestiGator was definitely this year’s big example of how you can make a game more accessible by listening to feedback from players.
PlayStation 5 Accessibility Store Tags
Back at the start of 2023, I published a video discussing things that I hoped we would see move toward being standards in video game accessibility during the upcoming year. In it, I noted that Xbox had implemented accessibility tags on their digital online store, allowing disabled gamers to see at point of purchase if a game featured accessibility settings that they may rely on, implemented to a sufficient degree of quality.
Accessibility store tags are a wonderful feature, and something I wanted to see move toward being an industry standard going forward. While Nintendo still hasn’t implemented a version of the feature on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation did start publishing accessibility store tags in the spring of 2023.
While the feature isn’t widely supported by all developers on the platform, the increasing normalisation of accessibility store tags is a great step forward for the industry. I hope that we see Nintendo finally adopt the feature themselves soon, as they approach the release of their next gen gaming hardware, presumably in 2024.
Forza Motorsport Announces Ambitious Blind Driving Assists, Which Release to Critical Acclaim
In terms of games that made ambitious strides forward in accessibility for their respective genres, there’s perhaps no greater example this year to point to than Forza Motorsport 2023, the newest entry in the technical racing sim series, announcing early in the year that they were developing assist features designed to allow sightless blind players to compete in races without sighted assistance.
Developed with the help of accessibility consultants, including the very talented Brandon Cole, the game’s ambitious Blind Driving Assists aimed to be a highly customisable experience which could make the hardcore simulation racer accessible to a whole new audience.
Conventional wisdom was that technical sim racers are just an inherently inaccessible genre, something reinforced by their often unapproachable car tuning mechanics, but upon release later in the year Forza Motorsport demonstrated a mastery of accommodating blind players without otherwise altering the experience of the game.
The game’s blind driving assists are a little intimidating initially, but offer a degree of customizability that feels incredibly at home in a genre about fine tuning over time to improve performance. From audio cues that signify distance from the track edge, to spoken cues for upcoming turn direction and intensity, the game made huge strides in showing how other fast paced 3D driving games can, with some effort, be playable via nothing but audio cues.
The sheer number of audio assists on offer is a bit cacophonous if you try and turn them all on at once, and the game could perhaps have benefitted from a dedicated tutorial for its audio assists, but the settings on offer have a huge amount of depth if you take the time to learn them.
Street Fighter 6’s Modern Controls
Back in the summer of 2022, Capcom announced that Street Fighter 6 would be getting, among other assist features, a new control scheme when it launched in 2023.
Modern Controls in Street Fighter 6 were designed to simplify input complexity, and reduce the need for memorisation and execution of combos during combat. The control scheme reduced inputs to focus on light, medium, heavy, and special attack buttons, with special and super moves pulled off using a single button and a directional modifier, similar to the controls seen in the Super Smash Bros series.
While not every single move on every single character is accessible this way, and there’s a degree of automation of combo strings, generally speaking the new control scheme does a great job of making gameplay more mechanically and cognitively accessible, and reducing the barrier to entry for play. Players can transfer muscle memory between fighters much more easily, and if they do wish to access any missing moves, combo inputs are still available to them.
The game also introduced a new “Dynamic” control scheme, which was even further reduced in complexity to largely automate attack choice, mostly requiring choice of when to attack, but only for local offline matches.
Additionally, while the Street Fighter series has for a long time been playable by sightless blind players via audio cues, Street Fighter 6 offered additional new audio cues, to further support blind players who were primarily interacting via audio.
The fact that Street Fighter 6 isn’t the undisputed title holder for “2023’s most accessible fighting game” is a testament to the quality of a later entry in this list, rather than a slight against Street Fighter 6 itself. This year saw two different fighting game series take large leaps forward in accessibility in very different ways. For me, Modern Controls was a huge deal, but I can’t blame anyone who has a preference for this year’s other major accessible player in the fighting game genre, which we’ll get to soon.
Diablo 4’s Accessibility Settings
While I’m not personally a big fan of the Diablo series of top down dungeon crawlers, I did make an effort this year to spend some time with Diablo 4, after learning that the game had made pretty significant strides forward for accessibility both at launch and in numerous post release updates.
The newest entry in the series offered players full button remapping support, the ability to turn button holds into toggles, analogue stick repositioning, persistent enemy target locking, customisable subtitles, Speech to Text for multiplayer chat, font and cursor resizing, audio cues to help locate loot drops and identify their rarity, high contrast outlines with custom colours for easier identification of on screen elements, and screen reader support at launch.
Since release, Diablo 4’s developers have been making a noticeable effort to continue improving their accessibility support in the game, which has for many disabled players been more playable than past entries in the series.
The Access-Ability Summer Showcase 2023
This is going to be a little bit self serving, so I’ll keep this entry brief.
In June of 2023 I created and hosted the first annual Access-Ability Summer Showcase, a video game trailer showcase held during the week of Summer Games Fest designed to highlight accessible video games and the features their developers had implemented in their titles.
The idea was to have one showcase during Summer Games Fest where disabled gamers would be able to know with confidence if a game that seemed cool was likely to be accessible for them or not upon release, without having to do additional research to get that information.
I basically wanted it to be a showcase where it was unlikely that someone would get excited for a game, only to later realise it wasn’t going to be something they could actually play.
The showcase was available with British and American Sign Language interpreters, as well as being available in an audio described format.
I know it’s self promotion, but I’m really proud of how the Access-Ability Summer Showcase turned out, and I’m really hoping it can grow in the years to come.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Sticking on the theme of Summer Games Fest for a moment, Ubisoft during their June press conference showcased the reveal trailer for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a 2D side scrolling adventure game due to release in January 2024.
What made this announcement notable was that, by the end of the press conference’s runtime, Ubisoft had published a document detailing the accessibility support options that they currently had implemented for the game, which was at the time still 7 months away from release.
It’s incredibly rare to see a AAA publisher be this open about accessibility settings at the moment of a game’s announcement, this far out from launch, and that is itself something worthy of praise.
Disabled gamers deserve to know if cool looking games are accessible as early as possible, and by communicating that information incredibly close to the game’s announcement, it allowed players to be more confident in getting excited about the game, knowing if they would be able to play it upon release.
PlayStation 5 Gets a Co-Pilot Mode Equivalent
Way back in 2017, Xbox announced a feature coming to their consoles called Co-Pilot mode which would allow a player to use two controllers at once as a single user. This could be used in a number of ways including spreading controls further apart than usual, handing a controller to a second player for help with inaccessible inputs, or to enable using a standard Xbox controller and an Xbox Adaptive Controller at once in conjunction with each other.
In February 2022, PlayStation dipped its toes into emulating this functionality by offering Co-Pilot mode support in a single PS5 game, Horizon Forbidden West. This proved that the technology could be implemented on PS5 consoles, at least in theory.
At the start of 2023, in my video discussing things that needed to become standards in video game accessibility in the year to come, system level support for Co-Pilot Mode on PS5 was one of the things I really hoped we would see become possible in 2023.
Thankfully, it happened.
The first hints that we heard of a system level Co-Pilot Mode equivalent on PlayStation 5 came at the start of the year, relating to the announcement of Project Leonardo, later renamed the PlayStation Access Controller. It was made clear that players could use up to two PlayStation Access Controllers and a DualSense at the same time as a single user, allowing for similar functionality to that seen when using an Xbox Adaptive Controller and a basic Xbox controller in unison.
However, at the time it wasn’t made clear if Co-Pilot Mode style functionality would also be coming to users who simply wanted to use two DualSense controllers at once.
Initially launched as part of a PS5 Firmware Beta, and eventually rolled out to all console players, we did see in the summer of 2023 PlayStation implement their own Co-Pilot Mode equivalent as a system level option on PS5.
While this is undoubtedly a step forward for PlayStation accessibility, their implementation isn’t quite as robust as that seen on Xbox Consoles. Players cannot independently remap their two controllers to have different button mappings, nor can they reorient the direction of their analogue sticks, to allow for gripping controllers in non standard orientations.
While PlayStation’s implementation could still be improved, the update’s release definitely brought us a step closer to standardisation of the feature, with Nintendo now the only console manufacturer not offering this kind of solution to their players.
Sea of Thieves Audio Aim Assist and Private Servers
Sea of Thieves is a first person online multiplayer pirate game that I’ve always wanted to play, but never really been able to. The game has a whole bunch of really interesting accessibility settings options available, but there are a few barriers that have always kept me from having fun with the game.
Chief among these issues is experienced players griefing new players in mandatory player vs player combat.
As a new Sea of Thieves player a few years ago, my main memory of playing the game was getting my first quest, trying to sail on my beginner’s boat to the island where that first objective lay, and watching a more experienced crew camped at the dock, ready to repeatedly blow our boat to pieces before we could even get close.
After a few hours it became clear they were not going to let us progress in the game.
This is why I was so excited when, in 2023, Sea of Thieves announced support for playing on Private Servers. This in practice meant that I could team up with a group of friends and get to grips with the game, without more experienced players destroying me for a laugh before I could even get going.
In addition, this year saw the release of Audio Aim Assist for Sea of Thieves, a series of audio cues designed to help blind players to aim their guns in first person at enemies, allowing for precision first person shooting via audio only.
Sea of Thieves has been a game I’ve been told for years is really accessible. Finally, in 2023, I feel supported to give playing the game another go.
Premium Early Access Release on Xbox
While I’ve tried to keep this video largely a celebration of accessibility positives and improvements seen in 2023, the next couple of sections of this script are going to be a little bit more on the negative side, and a little more critical.
In 2023, a worrying trend has started to develop that I fear may spread further across the games industry if not called out and criticised early.
Over the past few years, Xbox has been occasionally dabbling in charging players additional money to play their games ahead of their official release dates. The first example of this I remember was Forza Horizon 5 back in late 2021, but the trend ramped up considerably in late 2023, both with Xbox and other third party developers.
Starfield, Forza Motorsport, Lies of P, Mortal Kombat, Call of Duty and more were released this year under a pricing model where their release dates were staggered, with those either willing to pay a premium for a more expensive edition, or pre-order the game before reviews were available, getting to play these games considerably ahead of their peers.
While I am critical of this practice in general, I’ve highlighted Xbox in particular because it’s beginning to look like they are making the practice a standard for their big budget first party titles, and in the process destroying their own messaging around Xbox GamePass.
While these releases are presented as getting to play the game early, in effect I believe the opposite is true. To me, a game’s release date is the first day that the general public can purchase and own the game. The premium date is release day, and anyone not willing to pay the premium has to wait for an arbitrary later date to enjoy their game.
This preys on FOMO, fear of missing out, which disproportionately impacts gamers with conditions impacting impulse control such as those with ADHD, people experiencing manic episodes, or those particularly invested in not being spoiled on an anticipated piece of media, such as hyperfixated autistic players.
Additionally, in the case of Xbox, I really do feel that their “Available Day One on GamePass” messaging for both Starfield and Forza Motorsport was really disingenuous. I know a lot of disabled gamers who make use of GamePass as an affordable way to play new releases with low income, and having to pay £30 on top of your GamePass subscription, or wait five extra days to play, to me feels decidedly like the game isn’t actually available day one on GamePass.
The practice of premium early access releases in general I feel is in conflict with accessibility, and preys particularly on disabled players, and is something I do not want to see become the norm in this industry going forward.
Let’s Talk About Starfield
I’m going to keep this one really brief. Xbox’s first party game studios can generally be relied on to hit a consistent minimum bar for accessibility. Starfield drastically fell short of that standard.
The game has been in development for a long time, likely before Bethesda was acquired by Microsoft, but it still was disappointing to see not just the game’s lack of accessibility support, but Xbox’s lack of messaging on that topic right up until release day, in the face of constant requests for information from disabled players looking to find out if they needed to temper their excitement for the game as release approached.
It’s generally really dissapointing, that’s all we kind of need to say about that.
Mortal Kombat 1 and Audio Descriptions
While Street Fighter 6’s release this year was most notable for the improvements the series made to its control scheme, Mortal Kombat 1 made headlines for the ways that it ensured sightless blind players couldn’t only play the game, but could also enjoy the title’s more visceral moments.
Mortal Kombat 1 introduced narrative audio descriptions to the series, allowing players to hear a narrator describing in detail the game’s ultra violent fatalities.
Mortal Kombat 1 was already playable by many blind players via audio cues, but the ability to be included in the game’s signature violent cutscene content directly went a long way to making sure that the game was not only playable by disabled players, but able to be fully experienced. The core appeal of the game for many is those fatalities, it’s what sets the series apart, and ensuring that they were part of the experience for everyone was a great step forward to see.
Spider-Man 2 Launches, But is Missing Settings
Spider-Man 2 is a difficult game to discuss from an accessibility perspective, because of the state of the game at launch, and the state of the game today.
At first glance, Spider-Man 2 hit most of the expected settings one would hope to see in a first party PlayStation Studios release, ranging from traversal assistance, difficulty modifiers, high contrast mode visuals, and a whole host of audio tweaks available to players.
Spider-Man 2 launched in a decent state for accessibility, good even. Compared to most AAA video game releases, it was above the barrier of expected accessibility quality. In any other year, it would likely have been a frontrunner for most accessible game of the year.
However, Spider-Man 2’s accessibility settings are hard to talk about in a retrospective like this without discussing that a batch of the game’s accessibility options were missing at launch, and are still missing at the time of this video publishing, in some cases omitting fairly important support for players.
Some of these were ambitious features that were a little easier to understand being delayed, such as the series’ first dive into offering cinematic audio descriptions for cutscenes. However, some were more notable omissions, such as non-dialogue captions and screen reader support, which felt like their being delayed until months post launch was a bit disappointing.
These features were originally delayed two months from the game’s October launch into December, but in mid December they were delayed again to now arrive in “early 2024” with no specified month or date.
Don’t get me wrong, Spider-Man 2 is a delightfully fun game, and offers enough accessibility support that in other years it might have been considered best in class. It did a lot right, I don’t want to downplay that, it is a good game in terms of accessibility, but some of the things it was missing up front were a shame. It’s still a great and accessible game, with a caveat that has to be given when discussing it.
Nintendo Tournaments Ban Unlicensed Peripherals and Xbox Bans Unlicensed Devices
I’ve bundled these two stories together because, at the end of the day, they’re two sides of a very similar coin.
To start with the more unaddressed of these two stories, in the autumn of 2023, Nintendo released a series of new guidelines covering the running of community tournaments for Nintendo games.
To make a long story short, one of the guidelines that Nintendo requires of tournament organisers going forward is that their events do not allow the use of “unauthorised peripherals”. This is an issue for a few reasons, but most notably it in theory bans tournament organisers from allowing disabled players the use of a Hori Flex controller at events.
While the Hori Flex itself is a licensed Nintendo Switch peripheral, the 3.5mm and USB peripherals it’s designed to be used alongside are not licensed peripherals. The Hori Flex doesn’t feature analogue sticks, and the Switch doesn’t have a Co-Pilot Mode equivalent to support using Joy-Cons alongside it, meaning that for any game that requires analogue movement a tournament organiser would technically be breaking event rules by permitting full use of the console’s only accessibility focused controller.
Nintendo were contacted by many in the accessibility community seeking clarification of this ruling, and a clear exemption for accessibility peripherals, but received no response.
In a similar story, Xbox pushed out an update to consoles that triggered a new error code and a warning for some players using unlicensed peripherals. The error, which appeared with minimal warning, informed players that two weeks later in mid November Xbox would be shutting off console level support for unlicensed peripherals, rendering them unusable on the system level.
This impacted a lot of disabled gamers with weird janky custom controllers that they’d found useful when gaming, but it also caused a lot of unnecessary confusion and distress for Xbox Adaptive Controller users, who worried that their unlicensed 3.5mm and USB peripherals may become unsupported.
This wasn’t helped by initial Xbox messaging, including a statement pointing to an official Xbox website selling peripherals, and suggesting that the page was an exhaustive list of all official licensed products which would work after the cutoff date, and did not include most players’ Xbox Adaptive controller input devices.
Eventually, Xbox did clarify that Xbox Adaptive Controller 3.5mm and USB peripherals would be unaffected by this update, which was a relief for many and a step above how Nintendo responded in a similar situation, even if ultimately shutting off unlicensed devices outside of that context did still hurt some disabled gamers and their existing setups.
Splatoon 3’s Splattercolor Special
While Nintendo generally hasn’t done a great job at keeping up with Xbox and PlayStation in terms of accessibility, the most notable example of their poor approach to accessibility in 2023 may have come in the form of the Splattercolor Special in Splatoon 3.
This recently added special attack reduces all screen saturation, creating a fast fade to a bright greyscale, while adding distortion to the soundtrack.
While this may not seem significant, it can cause migraines and nausea in some players, impacts a wide variety of people with vision disabilities to a degree they may find the game briefly unplayable, causes sensory overload in some autistic players, and more.
The community has been trying to raise awareness of the issues caused by the new special for a few weeks now, with some match and tournament organising websites offering a toggle to ensure you only play with other users willing to agree not to use the special.
The community has gotten to the point where they see the need to work around the special for the good of disabled players, however Nintendo has ignored calls to either remove the special, or alter it in consultation with disabled consultants.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Gets High Contrast Visuals
A quick last minute entry to this list, in mid December 2023 a press release announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 would be receiving an accessibility focused update. The headline feature of the update was the addition of High Contrast Mode visuals to the game, showcased in a screenshot as highlighting enemies in red, and allied players in blue.
While specifics are light at the time of writing this last minute addition, it is notable that this is one of the only AAA games I can point to this year, not from a 1st party PlayStation studio, to make High Contrast visuals available to players. It’s still pretty uncommon, with the only other examples across 2022 and 2023 being Saints Row, The Calisto Protocol, and Hogwarts Legacy. Much like last year with Saints Row, I’ll praise it any time I see a new studio add high contrast mode visuals to one of their games.
The PlayStation Access Controller
Announced right at the start of the year, and released toward the end on December 6th, the PlayStation 5 Access Controller is simultaneously a step forward for hardware accessibility on PlayStation consoles, and a device with a needlessly limited design and narrow scope in who it’s useful for.
To summarise the conversation around the device upon release, while there was praise for the idea of releasing an accessibility controller which worked out of the box without the need for any external peripherals, something not really possible with the Xbox Adaptive Controller or Hori Flex, and there was praise for the software that allows quick and simple remapping of the device’s controls, the main areas of complaint were that the device’s buttons are a little too high resistance for some users, and if the devices circular form factor wasn’t a good fit for your needs as a disabled player, the Access Controller’s limited number of external input ports prevented customising the controller as robustly as you can with its main competitors.
If the buttons on the PlayStation Access Controller are too bunched together, or too high resistance, or you need your inputs more spread apart, each Access Controller only features four 3.5mm inputs (or eight on a pair of them), compared to the 20 or so ports available on its competition. This means that it’s a lot harder to create a fully customised setup, compounded by the lack of support for USB input devices, such as many common joysticks.
While the device’s release is definitely a step forward for the industry, and it’s a great fit for many disabled players, it really feels like with more 3.5mm input ports it could have been a much easier recommendation.
It feels like a device that PlayStation were confident would work for everyone without needing too many external inputs.
As a result they didn’t add more inputs, and it’s useful for fewer gamers.
Still, it does mean we now live in a world where there is an accessibility focused controller available for all three major consoles.
Next step, convince them to support a single multiplatform solution so that disabled gamers don’t necessarilly have to buy three separate expensive devices.
And there we have it, a year of video game accessibility news wrapped up in one end of year recap style video.
If you want to know about any of these stories in more depth, or see any of the stories this year that didn’t make the end of year recap, there’s a whole year of weekly Access-Ability episodes to rewatch on this channel.
If you’d like to see more perspectives on video game accessibility over the past year, there will be a link in the description to a video where I recommended a bunch of accessibility focused websites and creators that I would recommend following for a broader view of the video game accessibility conversation.
That’s me done for 2023. See you all in 2024 for a brand new year of reporting on video game accessibility.
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