A PlayStation employee made a custom PS4 controller for a 21-year-old with cerebral palsy
When a 21-year-old with cerebral palsy reached out to Sony about his difficulties using the PlayStation 4's controller, a PlayStation employee responded in the best way possible: He built a one-of-a-kind custom controller, just for him.
Peter Byrne, from South Amboy, New Jersey, says he reached out to Sony PlayStation because the PS4 controller didn't quite work for him. You see, the PlayStation 4's controller has a massive touchpad right in the center, which is often used to pause games or perform specific actions. The problem was, due to the way Byrne held the controller, he'd often hit the center touchpad and it'd pause the game.
Byrne emailed Sony, and he soon got a response from Alex Nawabi, an employee with Sony PlayStation's retail marketing operations department. Nawabi said he would help him out, but Byrne didn't know the extent to which Nawabi would help until he got a letter in the mail.
Byrne posted Nawabi's letter to Facebook on March 31, which you can read below:
The TL;DR version of this letter: After 10+ hours of labor and many revisions, Nawabi built a custom PlayStation 4 controller just for Byrne. It's similar to the regular controller but the touchpad is disabled and a new button was placed on the back to replace the touchpad's functionality.
Byrne said he received the first custom PS4 controller earlier this week. Nawabi also built Byrne a second modified game controller in case anything happens to the first one (pictured below).
We've reached out to Sony PlayStation to see if this custom controller is something the company would consider marketing to people with disabilities, but the company was not immediately available to comment. Still, we applaud this PlayStation's employees actions, for showing compassion and providing excellent customer service.
We first saw this story on New Jersey News 12.