PlayStation Gamer with Cerebral Palsy Receives Special Controller
A PlayStation fan who has cerebral palsy received a very special package one day. In it was a DualShock 4 controller that was especially customized to suit his gaming needs.
This lucky fan is college student Peter Byrne of South Amboy, N.J . Cerebral palsy is a set of neurological disorders that severely restrict and alter movement. For a gamer like Byrne, this means using a twin analog controller to play "Tom Clancy's The Division" would be difficult. His left hand would constantly brush against the standard controller's touchpad, which accidentally pauses the game or brings up an unwanted menu. A couple of weeks ago, he wrote to Sony explaining his predicament and got a response that was more than he expected.
Alex Nawabi, a member of Sony PlayStation's Research & Development team, got in touch with Byrne personally, saying he would "take the matter personally, not on behalf of PlayStation," according to IGN. In other words, Nawabi's work isn't part of an official PlayStation project.
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In his spare time, Nawabi designed a PlayStation 4 pad with a disabled touch screen and placed a new pause button at the bottom of the controller. The specially modified controller was finished in over 10 hours. Nawabi then sent it offer to Byrne for free and the special controller reached the fan's doorstep earlier this week.
"I wrote my email. Then the next day, Alex Nawabi got in contact with me," Byrne told News 12 New Jersey. "Inside was the letter and this controller that is now modified especially for me. He said that it's the first time he's ever done something like this. He did more than I ever expected."
In a letter, Nawabi asks for Byrne's feedback on his custom controller. The PlayStation employee also mentioned he plans on creating another controller for Byrne just in case the first one breaks but he'll wait for feedback before starting work on the second one.
