Sony's new Access Controller is just the latest in a slowly growing number of products aimed at making traditional video games easier for disabled gamers to play. Paul Lane was injured in a car accident in his 20s, leaving him unable to use his fingers.
"When I found out this product they were going to tackle, I was like, Wow, it's about time. Let's do it," he said. Widening the audiences that can play games is also good business, they add — and it would seem the major games publishers agree. Eventually, he turned his work toward advocating for better accessibility options in games, and reviewing new games under the lens of how friendly they can be for disabled gamers.Alex Carey, an accessibility consultant based in Vancouver, says his work broadly breaks disability into eight "barrier areas": strength, dexterity, blindness, low vision, hard of hearing and deafness, cognitive, emotional and speech-based disabilities.