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Sony’s video game controllers and the Disability Tax
This week Sony announced Project Leonardo, their venture into accessible technology for the Playstation. Since Microsoft launched the adaptive controller in 2018, many fans of the Playstation and its exclusive titles have been disappointed in the lack of an accessible way to play their favorite console.
I previously wrote an article about the Xbox Adaptive Controller (XAC) and its issues, with the main one being cost. With the impending launch of Project Leonardo, however, there’s another facet of this issue that merits discussion: proprietary technology and the disability tax.
Both Sony and Microsoft make tech for their respective consoles. This isn’t news to anyone, and this isn’t something I see most people have a problem with. Most people aren’t angry that they can’t use their Xbox controller on their Playstation (at least not without some tech knowledge and ingenuity).
However, I think it’s safe to say that most gamers would be pretty upset if they had to buy their controller in addition to their console. I mean, you need the controller to use the console. It would be pretty scummy for a company to sell you the console, then make you pay extra if you want to use it.
And yet, this is what many disabled people have to do. Bundles combining a console and adaptive controller don’t really exist unless you go to a physical store and the salesperson likes you. This means you have to pay extra just to use the console.
This phenomenon of disabled people having to pay more for something than they would if they weren’t disabled is part of the disability tax.
The disability tax is a relatively broad term that describes the extra financial, physical, or emotional labor disabled people must put up with to accomplish or access the same things as their nondisabled peers. This article published in the journal Including Disability describes the disability tax faced by people as the world adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic.
