Sony Announces Project Leonardo for PS5, Designed to Help With Controller Accessibility

It’s a little surprising that it took Sony this long to officially announce and release products to help with accessibility, but hey, better late than never. Project Leonardo is a new, highly customizable controller kit designed to help players with disabilities play their games on PS5 the way they want.

Featuring multiple control profiles, button mapping functionality, as well as interchangeable analog sticks and buttons that come in different shapes and sizes, Project Leonardo definitely looks promising and should go a long way in making PS5 games even more accessible than before. In addition to that, a Project Leonardo controller can be used on its own, or paired with a DualSense controller.

Here are some of the other features you can expect from the kit:

Hardware customizations. Project Leonardo for PS5 is a canvas for gamers to craft their own play experience. It includes a robust kit of swappable components, including a variety of analog stick caps and buttons in different shapes and sizes.

Players can use these components to craft a wide array of control layouts. And the distance of the analog stick from the game pad can be adjusted to suit the player’s preference. These components allow players to find a configuration that works for their strength, range of motion, and particular physical needs. 

Software customizations. On the PS5 console players have an array of options to tailor their Project Leonardo play experience:

• Button mapping
  • The controller’s buttons can be programmed to any supported function and multiple buttons can be mapped to the same function. Conversely, players can map two functions (like “R2” + “L2”) onto the same button.
• Control profiles
  • Players can store their programmed button settings as control profiles and easily switch between them by pressing the profile button.
  • Up to three control profiles can be stored and accessed by the player from their PS5 console at any time.

Project Leonardo is currently in development, and there’s no set release date for it just yet.