Sony Europe recently participated in TechShare Pro, Europe's largest event for accessibility and inclusive design professionals.

The event, now in its sixth year, was hosted by AbilityNet, a UK-based accessibility charity providing free online resources and a network of volunteers that help people with any disability, of any age to use technology.

• TechShare Pro

Sony has been participating in TechShare Pro since 2019 and we were silver sponsors for the 4th consecutive year in 2022.

Sony participated in a live panel session that discussed 'How do corporates drive accessibility innovation', joined The Valuable 500, Thoughtworks, Access Israel and AbilityNet to explain how accessibility is being driven and prioritised within Sony.

Sony used the event to showcase accessibility features on the following products and services from across the Sony Group in an online session.

Game

This session introduced PlayStation's accessibility efforts on the example of the recently launched Santa Monica Studio's 'God of War Ragnarök' game, which offers players more than 70 accessibility features. The session focused on four areas including Vision,Hearing,Motor, and Cognitive features that enable players to customize their gameplay experience depending on their individual needs.

• God of War Ragnarök accessibility options

You can learn more about the development process of the accessibility features for God of War Ragnarök in the video below, which was also shown at the Virtual Online booth.

Personal Audio Products

This session introduced several accessible features of headphones. For noise cancelling headphones, "Adaptive Sound Control," which detecting actions or locations, and adjusting the noise cancelling function automatically and "Speak-to-Chat," which allows customers to speak with someone while wearing the headphones.

In addition, noting that it is very important, especially for the people with visual impairments, to be able to hear the sounds around them while listening to music, this session also introduced the LinkBuds Truly Wireless Earbuds that allow the wearer to enjoy calls and audio content whilst continuing to hear surrounding ambient sounds clearly thanks to its open ring design that does not block the ears.

Sony's personal audio products deliver not only a superior music experience, but also an experience that enhances people's lives by bringing them closer to their lifestyles.

Accessibility features coming to photography

Sony and QD Laser held a joint session that focussed on accessibility innovation in the area of digital photography.

We presented Sony's camera technologies including the Screen Reader function*1 and Real-time Eye AF function, which ensures perfect portraits and creative composition by keeping focus on the subject's eyes. Also introduced in the session was the RETISSA NEOVIEWER*2, which is under development by QD Laser, Inc. The RETISSA NEOVIEWER is a device based on QD Laser's proprietary laser retinal projection technology that allows people who have difficulty seeing through conventional viewfinders or screens to project the scenery captured by a camera onto their retinas and take photos and videos. In this session, we also introduced a prototype of the device combined with Sony's DSC-HX99 compact camera.

• *1As of February 2023, the Screen Reader function is limited to the North American model of the Alpha 7 IV (ILCE-7M4) (when set to English) and is only supported for some settings and operations during movie playback.
• *2RETISSA and NEOVIEWER are registered trademark or trademark of QD Laser, Inc.

Events such as TechShare Pro provide a valuable opportunity for us to network with our industry peers and communicate our efforts to create an accessible future.