Disability Smart Impact Awards 2026

Disability Smart Impact: Accessible Built Environment Award

• Homelands Trust – Fife, for thoughtfully designing and building 9 luxury accessible holiday lodges, fully equipped so guests who experience physical disabilities and their friends, family and carers can enjoy memorable breaks. 
• Eli Lilly, for their Access Lilly programme, which is transforming 50 global sites through 10,000+ accessibility improvements. Its continuous assess–improve–assess cycle places user insight at the heart, creating workplaces where everyone can thrive. 
• Amazon Italy, for improving fulfilment and logistics sites with visual alerts, vibrating radios, optimized workstations, and accessible communications, enabling nearly 200 Deaf employees to work safely and effectively across multiple locations.

Disability Smart Impact: Customer Experience Award (large organisation)

• Lloyds Banking Group, for developing Read-Only Internet Banking with disabled customers, enabling carers to safely view balances and monitor for fraud while protecting customers’ financial independence, autonomy and peace of mind.
• Durham University, for introducing Sighted Guide training across campus, equipping staff to confidently support visitors with sight loss and improving independence, dignity and trust when navigating its historic and complex environment. 

Disability Smart Impact: Customer Experience Award (small organisation)

• Greenwich & Docklands International Festival, for creating a world-class, free outdoor arts event with disabled creatives at its heart, making spectacular theatre, dance and circus accessible to Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent audiences.
• Thrive Together Support, for delivering a person-centred, community-driven day service that builds skills, work-based learning and social development, empowering people with learning and additional support needs to shape their futures.
• Accessible Housing Scotland, for delivering personalised housing support to disabled people and providing real-world outcomes to improve their home lives, independence, safety and wellbeing. 

Disability Smart Impact: Diversity and Inclusion Professional Award

• Ross Hovey, Workplace Inclusion Manager, Lloyds Banking Group, for being a driving force behind the disability inclusion work at LBG for over 12 years. His work also extends beyond his day job, as he shared his knowledge and expertise with organisations like Gatwick Airport, AccessAble and Permobil.
• Will King, Head of Human Resources, Evtec, for ensuring disability inclusion is a core part of Evtec’s responsible business strategy via the Disability Inclusion Transformation programme, a supported internship and student placement pipeline, and by making Evtec’s Smart Factory is fully accessible. 
• Sharon Extance, Disability Officer, Freeths, for her swiftness and caring approach in implementing workplace adjustments, with demonstrable positive impact on disabled colleagues. 

Disability Smart Impact: Global Disability Inclusion Award

Sponsored by: Everway

• Bupa, for their global Accessibility Commitments, which are transforming disability inclusion across their workforce and communities. Through leadership, collaboration and investment they are creating inclusive environments, expanding advocacy and inspiring cultural change.
• Sutherland Global, for engineering end‑to‑end accessible systems that deliver independent work, career progression, and cultural confidence for disabled employees across continents. 
• Unilever, for their Global Accessibility Centre of Excellence, which embedded accessibility into products, workplaces and culture at global scale throughout 2025, delivering measurable, lasting impact, independence and dignity for disabled people worldwide. 

Disability Smart Impact: Inclusive Communication Award

• Uit met Autisme (Out with Autism), for their innovative online platform, which has helped to improve access to leisure facilities for people with autism and people who experience sensory processing differences.
• Worley, for their This is Me global internal communication awareness campaign, which harnessed the power of storytelling by disabled and neurodivergent people across 13 countries and 5 continents.
• Sony, for their Inclusive Design, Education and Accessibility Lab (IDEA Lab), a flagship inclusive communication initiative that uses multiple inclusive communication channels to help employees understand the importance of inclusive design.

Disability Smart Impact: Leader Award 

• Amy Nicholas (Morgan’s Butchery), for displaying exceptional disability-led entrepreneurship creating genuine innovation in an overlooked sector. She proves that comprehensive accessibility is achievable for micro-businesses through low-cost, high-impact cultural and operational changes.
• Iain Wilkie (50 Million Voices), for demonstrating exceptional leadership with documented firsts, global scale, and measurable outcomes. He shows genuine innovation by positioning stammering on workplace EDI agenda, creating replicable networks and dual-focus listening methodology. 
• Marc Powell (Unilever), for delivering sector-leading accessibility at exceptional scale through Unilever’s Global CoE. He shows strong innovation in cost-reduction, AI democratisation, and upstream design integration, plus robust co-creation with disabled employees and external experts, with significant impact.

Disability Smart Impact: Procurement Award

• Barclays, for transforming procurement into a catalyst for inclusion by pairing deep accessibility expertise with open‑source supplier standards and lived‑experience co‑design.
• BBC Workforce Product Inclusion, for setting a new standard for responsible public-sector procurement through formal accessibility gateways, enforceable Terms of Trade, independent assessments, and specialist training for 22,000 staff.

Disability Smart Impact: Product Design Award

• Sensory Shine, for creating accessible oral care solutions that reduce everyday barriers and support dignity, enabling greater independence and wellbeing for disabled people and those supporting daily hygiene routines.
• Sekond Skin Society, for creating an accessible fitness and yoga app to bring disabled and non-disabled people together through inclusive classes, empowering disabled leadership and transforming assumptions about disability worldwide.
• Intotum, for designing industry-first adaptive garments through its Work Hard Dress Easy campaign, enabling disabled people to dress independently and confidently and removing barriers between accessibility and contemporary fashion. 

Disability Smart Impact: Recruitment Award 

• Curiously Divergent, for creating neuro-inclusive employment pathways and an innovative escape room workshop that builds confidence, identifies strengths and supports neurodivergent young people to access, navigate and sustain meaningful employment.
• BBC, for their Extend Programme; redesigning recruitment through ring-fenced roles, accessible processes and inclusive hiring practices to create sustainable careers and improve representation, progression and belonging for deaf, disabled and neurodivergent talent.
• KPMG UK, for embedding inclusive recruitment across every stage of the employment journey, from classroom to boardroom, creating opportunities and long-term career pathways that enable disabled people to enter, progress and thrive at work.

Disability Smart Impact: Technology Award (large organisation)

• The Financial Conduct Authority (FAC), for creating a digitally inclusive world for their colleagues, stakeholders and consumers via their use of AI, augmented reality and awareness sessions.
• ServiceNow, for their Voice Input for Now Assist which uses inclusive AI to enable disabled people to work more independently, completing tasks faster through secure, domain‑aware voice commands.
• Tesco, for their new on‑screen accessibility settings on self‑service checkouts, which allow customers to customise text size and colour contrast for a more inclusive experience.

Disability Smart Impact: Technology Award (small organisation)

• Diverse Made Media, for CAERUS, the World’s first wheelchair camera system. It removes a historic barrier in film and television and empowers disabled creatives to step behind the camera as independent operators for the first time.
• SensePilot, for their use of standard webcams to enable people with limited dexterity or mobility to operate a PC and play video games hands-free by using head direction, facial gestures and speech as inputs.
• Mobility Mojo, for their cloud-based software platform that allows organisations to assess and improve the accessibility of their workplaces and public spaces with unmatched precision and ease.

Disability Smart Impact: Workplace Experience Award (large organisation) 

Sponsored by: Kingspan Insulation Limited.

• BCLP, for their initiative expanding diagnostic access, streamlining workplace adjustments, and fostering an inclusive culture, supporting disabled colleagues and those with long-term conditions to thrive.
• Garavanti BBVA, for TalentAccess, their internship programme co-designed with disabled students, which integrates accessible work, learning and social opportunities to support long-term participation, growth and retention.
• Sutherland Global, for creating an accessible-by-design system for their whole workplace on a global scale, enabling long-term success for disabled people across the entire employment lifecycle with a holistic and consistent approach.

Disability Smart Impact: Workplace Experience Award (small organisation)

• Evtec, for building disability inclusion into their organisational transformation, from recruitment and onboarding, to designing a more accessible factory environment.
• Tilting the Lens, for building a more inclusive world through their open-source research database and the paid opportunities they create for disabled people globally to contribute their lived experience.
• Happy Smiles Training, for re-imagining the workplace through the lens of disabled people’s lived experience, prioritising employee wellbeing and enabling employment and progression for people previously excluded from work.

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