On October 9, at the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults in Sands Point, New York, Helen Keller Services handed out its 2026 AccessAbility Awards to five organizations that take accessibility seriously: Canon U.S.A., Dot Inc., the Michigan Road Branch of the Indianapolis Public Library, OXO, and Rylo. Now in their sixth year, the awards spotlight a simple thesis: accessibility is not a compliance checkbox, it is a catalyst for better design, expanded opportunity, and full participation in community life.
Five honorees, one standard
The selection committee said it looked for accessibility showing up in everyday details, not only mission statements. What distinguished this year's honorees, according to Accessibility Specialist Megan Dausch, who led the selection committee, was that each one engages directly with the disability community and lets that feedback shape what it builds and how it serves. Four were recognized for products and initiatives that expand access: printing technology that turns visual imagery into tactile experiences, a multiline tactile display, household tools built on universal design, and communication technology shaped by the Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard-of-hearing communities. The fifth, a neighborhood library branch, was honored for practice rather than product: for showing what it looks like when a public institution welcomes people with disabilities as patrons, employees, and community members.
Touch you can scroll: the Dot Pad X
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Dot Inc., founded in Seoul in 2015, develops tactile technology that makes digital information accessible through touch. Its flagship device, the Dot Pad X, is a portable multiline refreshable braille and tactile graphics display. By combining multiline refreshable braille with tactile graphics in one device, the technology gives people who are blind and DeafBlind access through touch to maps, charts, diagrams, images, and text: content that is often presented only visually.
The difference is worth spelling out. A conventional single-line braille display forces readers to pan across text line by line, like reading a book through a letterbox. The Dot Pad X puts braille and graphics under the reader's fingertips together, so a person who is DeafBlind can explore what icons look like on a smartphone, read tactile graphics, and read a full page of braille without that constant panning. That matters for educational materials, workplace documents, and data visualizations: exactly the content where independence is won or lost.
Dot's relationship with Helen Keller Services includes participation in Tech Blitz, the assistive technology showcase at the Helen Keller National Center, where the Dot team led a breakout session and community members experienced the technology firsthand.
A printer that teaches eyes through fingertips
By the numbers
Canon U.S.A. was honored for its printing technology, which is being used to create tactile and accessible experiences that enable people who are blind, have low vision, or are DeafBlind to engage meaningfully with visual content. Through finely detailed tactile renderings, Canon's technology transforms visual imagery into an immersive touch experience.
Specifically, the recognition cites Canon's large-format tactile print capabilities, enabled by the Arizona printer platform, as a demonstration of how advanced printing technology can make visual information accessible through touch. It is a nice inversion: an industry built on visual storytelling is being used to route visual content around the eyes entirely.
Accessibility is not a feature you add at the end. It is a decision about who belongs.
Private, real-time conversation tech
Rylo, formerly known as Nagish, builds private, real-time communication technology for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community. Its AI-powered platform removes barriers to communication in personal, professional, and public settings while adhering to strict regulatory and privacy standards. The company says it considers accessibility throughout its product design and development process, regularly tests and improves its products, and incorporates feedback from the Deaf, DeafBlind, hard-of-hearing, and speech-disabled communities it serves.
The privacy emphasis is notable. Communication tools that process speech often route audio through the cloud, and people who rely on them for every conversation face a heavier privacy burden than the rest of us. Rylo's pitch is that private, real-time communication should not require trading privacy for access.
Universal design, 35 years deep
OXO was honored for a decades-long commitment to universal design: creating household products that are functional for the widest range of people. From the ergonomic peeler that started it all to angled measuring cups, one-handed POP containers, locking tongs, and jar openers designed for limited hand strength, OXO's products are intuitive, comfortable, and low effort by design.
The company tests products with members of the disability community, including through its partnership with Day Undefined, an organization advancing accessible living through product testing and feedback, and maintains a long relationship with the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. The company's original Swivel Peeler is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art: a reminder that design serving people with arthritis, limited grip strength, or dexterity challenges is simply good design for everyone.
The library branch that hires its way in
The Michigan Road Branch of the Indianapolis Public Library was recognized for creating an inclusive culture that welcomes people with disabilities as employees, patrons, and community members. The branch builds the conditions for DeafBlind employees and employees with disabilities to do their jobs and belong on the team: customizing the accessibility features built into everyday workplace technology, arranging ASL interpretation not only for trainings and team meetings but for social gatherings, structuring schedules around varied tasks, and fostering colleagues who learn basic ASL to communicate directly. The same commitment extends to patrons, with interpreters at a wide variety of events and staff equipped to support the accessibility features on the devices people use every day.
The branch's connection to Helen Keller Services runs through HKNC's DeafBlind Employment Specialists, who work in communities across the country, including Indiana, partnering with local employers and service providers to create sustainable employment pathways. That partnership gave HKS a firsthand view of the branch's workplace culture, and it is why the branch stands alongside four technology and design companies: honored not for what it builds but for how it employs and serves.
Why these choices matter
The business case was spelled out bluntly: one in five people worldwide lives with a disability, and the global market represents $7 trillion in annual disposable income, an often underserved opportunity for businesses that prioritize accessibility. Beyond that, accessibility is fundamentally about creating a world where everyone can fully participate in society.
The awards have honored industry leaders across sectors since 2021. Past recipients include Apple, United Airlines, LEGO, Be My Eyes, Procter and Gamble, Kellanova, Netflix, Microsoft, The Viscardi Center, ADP, The Heckscher Museum of Art, Polara Enterprises, Tatum Robotics, and Teach Access. In 2024, the awards expanded to include a virtual Accessibility Symposium that reached over 3,000 viewers worldwide. That lineage gives the 2026 list its weight: it is not a ceremony for a niche, but an annual audit of how seriously the biggest companies in the world take design for everyone.
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