Axe-con is about the people. The global digital accessibility community. The change agents and progress-makers who are tirelessly advancing the mission of digital equality.
The tactical focus of Axe-con may be on knowledge-sharing, but the vibe is all about connection and celebration. You’ll feel that vibe throughout the conference, and especially when the Axe-con awards are revealed—a moment that is always one of the most anticipated experiences of the year.
The Axe Awards represent a very special opportunity to honor and celebrate the people and organizations doing notably impactful work in accessibility. We have four awards to present: the Accessibility Culture Award, the Accessibility at Scale Award, the Longstanding Commitment to Accessibility Award, and the Jim Thatcher Lifetime Achievement Award.
Are you ready to celebrate? Let’s meet our Axe Award winners!
ADP: 2026 Accessibility Culture Award
Accessibility culture deepens and expands as inclusion is shared across teams. It’s not about one group of specialists. It’s about the entire organization unifying around the mission, embracing positive change, and taking the right tactical steps to achieve meaningful transformation.
Deque recognizes ADP as the 2026 Accessibility Culture Award recipient and honors Kelsey Hall’s leadership, as well as the tireless work of the ADP Accessibility Team, including Yulia Sarviro, Gouri Khanvilkar, Stephanie Brooks, KJ Schmidt, Julia Cotton, and Dawn Schakett, in making accessibility part of everyday work across the organization and building a true culture of accessibility.
At ADP, accessibility begins with strong executive sponsorship, supported by policies that establish accessibility as a quality requirement. ADP has embedded accessibility into how teams plan, build, and improve their software, shifting from reactive remediation to a standard development practice. The organization reinforces this approach through transparent reporting, an annual roadmap, and a maturity model that clarifies responsibilities and expectations for application teams. This success is in large part due to the many product managers, designers, engineers, and quality teams who implement these best practices into their work each day.
Education is also central to sustaining this culture. Employees complete accessibility training through Deque University and gain the skills to design and develop accessible experiences independently, expanding ownership beyond a single team. Regular reporting emphasizes progress, completion rates are tracked, and individuals and teams are empowered to apply new skills in real time.
Through sustained leadership, workforce education, and operational accountability, ADP has made accessibility not just part of how the company operates, but part of its culture. The 2026 Accessibility Culture Award recognizes ADP’s impact and achievements.
Nestlé: 2026 Accessibility at Scale Award
Each year, Deque presents the Accessibility at Scale Award to recognize an organization that expands a sustainable accessibility program across its global operations.
Deque is proud to recognize Nestlé as the recipient of the 2026 Accessibility at Scale Award. The company set extremely ambitious goals, and then delivered against them with remarkable speed and efficiency by prioritizing collaboration and coordination across teams and stakeholders.
Managing a broad and complex portfolio of brand and market websites worldwide, Nestlé implemented a coordinated model that balanced centralized visibility with distributed ownership. Using a combination of Deque tools and training resources, the company maintained portfolio-level oversight while bringing accessibility earlier into development workflows and enabling teams to build accessible experiences independently.
The impact was clear: accessibility improved across Nestlé’s web properties while overall accessibility maturity strengthened across the organization. Through unwavering commitment to their goals, they demonstrated that accessibility can scale across a complex digital ecosystem.
For achieving meaningful progress at a global level, Deque is pleased to recognize Nestlé as the recipient of the 2026 Accessibility at Scale Award.
Eli Lilly and Company: 2026 Longstanding Commitment to Accessibility Award
Deque is proud to honor Eli Lilly and Company as the 2026 recipient.
Eli Lilly and Company approaches digital accessibility holistically, removing barriers for both employees and customers. The company is committed to creating digital experiences that are easy to use and accessible for all people, regardless of ability or technology.
By establishing digital accessibility as an essential component of everything from customer experience and health literacy to company culture and employer brand, Lilly is able to launch and sustain initiatives that foster cross-functional alignment and secure multi-year funding, helping to ensure continued progress.
As a company built on core values of respect for people, integrity, and excellence, Lilly holds its accessibility strategy to the same standard. By setting clear expectations and accountability across teams, accessibility is treated with the same rigor as other critical business priorities.
Through sustained leadership and clear standards, Lilly demonstrates its commitment to expanding access and participation for everyone. By taking a holistic approach and committing to long-term, sustainable success, the company is ensuring that digital accessibility remains a consistent priority.
For these reasons and more, we are honored to recognize Eli Lilly and Company as the recipient of Deque’s 2026 Longstanding Commitment to Accessibility Award.
Alice Wong: 2026 Jim Thatcher Lifetime Achievement Award
The Axe-con Lifetime Achievement Award is presented posthumously to Alice Wong, a visionary leader whose work transformed how the world understands disability, power, and community.
Alice was not simply an advocate for accessibility. She reshaped the narrative. Through the Disability Visibility Project and her groundbreaking books, including Disability Visibility, she elevated first-person stories of disabled people and insisted that disabled voices lead conversations about policy, design, technology, and culture.
She was fierce. She challenged institutions. She refused tokenism. She named injustice clearly and without apology. And in doing so, she created space for others to speak and to be heard.
Yet alongside that fierceness was something equally powerful: joy. Alice made it clear that the hardship many people with disabilities face is not inherent to disability; it is the result of exclusion, inaccessibility, and ableism. And still, she insisted that joy, creativity, humor, and community belong fully to people with disabilities now; not after the world “gets it right.”
She encouraged all of us not to wait for a perfect world before claiming moments of happiness. Justice, work, and joy were not opposites in her life; they were companions.
In February 2025, Alice delivered a keynote at Axe-con that many of us will never forget. Just eight months before her passing, she stood exactly where she had always stood: amplifying others, challenging systems, and calling us to do better.
Her legacy is not only the work she produced. It is the voices she amplified. The leaders she encouraged. The community she strengthened. And it is the example she gave us of how to speak with clarity, center disabled voices, embrace joy without minimizing injustice, and continue the work even when progress feels slow.
For a lifetime of transformative impact, unapologetic truth-telling, and radical joy, we honor Alice Wong.
And we encourage everyone to accept the responsibility that comes with honoring Alice. Because the greatest way we can honor Alice is not with our words, but with our actions; by refusing to let accessibility be delayed, diluted, or dismissed. Her vision was clear. Our task now is to make accessibility a permanent reality.
Looking ahead
As Deque founder and CEO Preety Kumar has noted, there is a massive groundswell of energy happening in the world of digital accessibility.
Profoundly impactful regulatory advancements, such as the European Accessibility Act, are ensuring that digital accessibility is now truly a global mission. Innovative technological developments, such as agentic AI, are making it possible to achieve global digital accessibility at scale.
However, as exciting as this moment is, and as exhilarating as it is to think about the milestones 2026 has in store for us, we must remember that regulation and technology alone don’t drive progress—people do. And that’s what the Axe Awards are all about: celebrating the people who seize every moment to drive this mission forward. Today, we celebrate our four awardees. Every day, we celebrate you all. Thank you for the work that you do. You are making a difference.
