In this Insights post, eLaHub explores how a new Learning Technologies Awards category is recognising accessible and inclusive digital learning as part of learning excellence.
In the 2026 Learning Technologies Awards promotional video, there is a shot of me grinning from ear to ear as I walk through the audience to the stage. The moment lasts only a second. If you blink at the wrong time, you’ll miss it, but that smile conveys something very important for eLaHub – and for accessible learning.
That evening, eLaHub received a silver award for our Designing Accessible Learning Content Programme in the international Excellence in the Design of Learning Content category. The judges recognised its excellent learning design, the way accessibility had been built in throughout, its focus on the learner experience and its commitment to continuous improvement – a fantastic summary of what made the programme stand out.
We were also delighted to collect a gold award on behalf of Sarah Mercier and Build Capable. Their XCL product won Most Innovative New Learning Technologies Product. The judges described XCL as “impressive, accessible and disruptive”, recognising both the accessibility of the product and the way it challenged conventional thinking about learning technology. For us, that was another powerful example of accessibility sitting alongside innovation and excellence, rather than limiting either of them.
These awards meant a great deal because both were won in mainstream learning design and technology categories. They demonstrated that accessible and inclusive learning and products can sit confidently alongside the strongest examples of learning design and innovation in our industry.
Then came another reason to grin.
A moment eight years in the making
At the 2026 Learning Technologies Conference, I joined Sarah Mercier to deliver a session exploring how organisations can move from reactive accessibility fixes towards proactive, inclusive design. During that session, I had the privilege of announcing a new Learning Technologies Awards category:
Excellence in Accessible and Inclusive Digital Learning
For me, the announcement followed more than eight years of eLaHub advocacy for accessibility to be recognised as a fundamental measure of learning excellence. Many other people across the industry have been working towards the same goal. But for me it felt like a personal crusade. My shortlisted entry for the awards back in 2019 was my first attempt to get accessibility on the awards agenda. It didn’t succeed at the time – but years later that ambition finally became a reality.
I was privileged to work with Sophie Costin and then the wider Learning Technologies Awards team to develop the criteria for the new award. Creating them meant thinking carefully about what meaningful excellence in accessible learning should look like and what entrants should be expected to demonstrate.
The result is a category that gives organisations a dedicated opportunity to demonstrate that accessible learning provides an excellent learner experience, meets recognised accessibility standards and delivers measurable value to the organisation.
The impact of recognition
Awards create visibility, and when accessibility appears within a major industry awards programme, it sends a clear message to learning teams, suppliers, leaders and clients. Accessible and inclusive design deserves the same attention, ambition and investment as every other recognised area of learning excellence.
That visibility is particularly important in Learning and Development. Accessibility is still often treated as a technical requirement, a final quality check or a specialist responsibility sitting outside the main learning design process. A dedicated award places it firmly within conversations about excellent learning experiences, innovation, organisational impact and measurable value.
It also gives people who have worked hard to improve accessibility an opportunity to share their achievements and receive recognition for work that can otherwise remain largely unseen.
Awards help define what excellence looks like
But the value of an award category extends far beyond the organisations that eventually take home a trophy. Award criteria establish a public benchmark for accessible and inclusive digital learning. They show organisations what good practice involves and give teams something concrete against which they can assess their own work.
The Excellence in Accessible and Inclusive Digital Learning category asks entrants to demonstrate that their project:
- provides an excellent learning experience while addressing a clearly defined business need
- demonstrates compliance with recognised accessibility standards such as WCAG 2.2 AA
- considers diverse learner access needs to create a more flexible experience
- is shaped by the perspectives of disabled people and people with access needs
- demonstrates a clear impact on the business need and value to the organisation
Entrants also need to provide evidence to support their claims. This could include an accessibility statement, accessibility testing report and qualitative and quantitative impact data. This moves organisations beyond simply saying their learning is accessible. They need to show what they did, how accessibility influenced the design, how they tested it and what difference it made.
Accessibility, evidence and impact
eLaHub’s training, consultancy and auditing work has shown us how closely accessibility, effective learning design and organisational impact are connected.
One of the things I particularly like about the criteria is the emphasis on evidence. Entrants are asked to demonstrate how their focus on accessibility and inclusion contributed to meeting the business need and delivering value to the organisation. What that evidence looks like will vary enormously between projects. It might include wider participation, fewer accessibility barriers, improvements in the learner experience or evidence that people can apply what they have learned more effectively.
The important thing is deciding what success looks like early enough to collect meaningful evidence of whether you achieved it. Preparing evidence also encourages useful questions:
- Which accessibility standards did we use?
- How did we apply them within the learning?
- Which access needs did we consider?
- How did disabled people and people with access needs contribute?
- What accessibility testing did we complete?
- What changed as a result of testing?
- How do we know the solution worked?
These are useful questions for any learning project, whether or not it is going to be entered for an award.
Bringing disabled people into the process
One of the most important elements of the new category is its expectation that the design and implementation should be shaped by the perspectives of disabled people and people with access needs. Standards provide an essential foundation, but they cannot represent every experience of using learning content. Disabled learners and practitioners can identify barriers, explain how particular design decisions affect their experience and challenge assumptions about how people interact with technology.
Their involvement might include consultation and user testing, with the approach depending on the project. What matters is that their contribution is meaningful and is able to influence decisions. This criterion encourages organisations to consider whose voices are present during the learning design process and whose experiences may currently be missing.
An award mindset can change learning from the outset
During a Learning Technologies Awards session for prospective applicants, What it takes to win: Turning L&D impact into award-winning stories, expert judge Emma Klosson talked about approaching projects with an ‘award mindset’. The session explored how starting strongly, capturing evidence of impact and laying the foundations for an award entry from the outset can also improve the quality and value of the work itself.
That idea made a powerful impression on me. An award mindset does not require every project to be developed with the intention of winning something. It means setting a high standard from the beginning and thinking about how you will know whether the project has succeeded.
For accessible and inclusive learning, two useful questions are:
- How will the access needs of our audience shape and improve the learning experience for everyone?
- How will our accessible and inclusive design decisions deliver demonstrable value for learners and the organisation?
Those questions can influence the brief, budget, timescale, design process, testing and evaluation. They make accessibility part of the project’s definition of quality from the outset.
What eLaHub awards show about accessible learning
The Learning Technologies silver award was particularly important to us because DALC was recognised in the international Excellence in the Design of Learning Content category. A programme built around accessibility was being judged against the same expectations for learning design and learner experience as every other shortlisted project.
That recognition sits alongside eLaHub’s Brandon Hall Group Gold Award for Best Training Program for Global Accessibility Standards and my Learning Professional of the Year Gold Award from the Learning and Performance Institute.
Together, these awards provide external recognition not simply of our accessibility expertise, but of accessibility as an integral part of excellence in learning design, learner experience and professional practice.
Why a dedicated accessibility award is still needed
Ultimately, I would love to reach a point where accessibility and inclusion are part of the criteria across every learning award category. But while our industry continues to develop its accessibility capability, a dedicated category has an important role.
It creates visibility, recognises people who are pushing this work forward and gives learning teams a clear benchmark for what accessible and inclusive digital learning can look like. It can also give accessibility champions something concrete to take into conversations with leaders, project sponsors and suppliers.
Most importantly, its influence does not depend on organisations entering the awards. Teams can use the criteria to ask better questions at the beginning of a project, including whether accessibility is in the brief, whether enough time and budget have been allowed for testing, how people with access needs will be involved and how impact will be measured.
This reflects what we find through our accessibility consultancy work. Lasting change happens when accessibility becomes part of organisational processes and everyday ways of working rather than something addressed separately within individual projects.
Planning your next accessible learning project
The entry window for the 2026 Learning Technologies Awards has now closed, but the criteria remain publicly available and can still be used as a planning tool.
Excellence in Accessible and Inclusive Digital Learning criteria
What this award category is about:
This award recognises projects, interventions and implementations that demonstrate a commitment to delivering excellent learning content for all. Entries should align with recognised accessibility standards such as WCAG 2.2 AA, not only to show technical compliance but also to promote inclusion.
The judges will be assessing how well the solution adheres to the principles of excellent learning design and delivers impact while providing an inclusive approach that ensures all learners feel considered, supported and able to participate fully.
What the judges will be looking for:
- The project delivers an excellent learning experience to address a clearly defined business need.
- The learning experience has been effective and received positively by a diverse learner audience and stakeholders alike.
- The project demonstrates compliance with recognised accessibility standards (such as WCAG 2.2 AA), with evidence of how the standards were interpreted and implemented within the learning solution.
- The project demonstrates how diverse learner access needs have been considered and addressed to create a better, more flexible experience for all.
- The design and implementation were shaped by the perspectives of people with disabilities and access needs.
- The project represents the best possible solution given the constraints and issues encountered in optimising for accessibility and inclusion.
- The focus on accessibility and inclusion has made a clear and demonstrable impact on successfully meeting the business need and delivering value to the organisation.
Teams developing new learning can use them to review their existing processes and identify where accessibility could be built in earlier or addressed more effectively. Starting early creates time to involve people with access needs, build accessibility into the design, test the learning properly and collect meaningful evidence of its impact.
If you want a practical starting point, our 20 eLearning accessibility tips for different access needs Insights post brings together straightforward actions across vision, hearing, motor and cognitive access needs, with a downloadable leaflet you can use with your team.
For a much more in-depth exploration of what accessible and inclusive learning involves, our eLaHub ultimate guide to accessible and inclusive eLearning brings together detailed guidance on the standards, design decisions and wider considerations that can help you build accessibility into learning from the start.
Making accessibility part of learning excellence
For eLaHub, the introduction of this category represents much more than another award to enter. After years of advocating for accessibility to be recognised as part of excellent learning design, it provides a visible industry benchmark for what accessible and inclusive digital learning can achieve.
We will use the criteria in our own work too, as another way to challenge ourselves and the organisations we work with to consider accessibility, evidence and impact from the beginning. If the category encourages more teams to involve disabled people, test their learning properly, demonstrate its value and raise their expectations of accessible design, its influence will extend far beyond the organisations that eventually take home a trophy.
The award itself will recognise some exceptional projects. The bigger opportunity is to influence thousands of learning decisions made before those projects ever reach a judging panel.
That really is worth grinning about.
About this article
Written by: Susi Miller and the eLaHub team
Published: July 2026
Explore more with the eLaHub newsletter
For longer thought-leadership articles, in-depth practical guidance and strategic perspectives on accessible and inclusive learning, subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter, The eLaHub Accessibility Briefing.
Each edition explores an important topic in greater depth, drawing on research, client experience and lived experience. You will find clear guidance, practical reflections and useful ideas to help you move accessibility forward across your organisation.
Subscribe to The eLaHub Accessibility Briefing [Add link]
Links and resources
- Learning Technologies Awards 2026 promotional video – Learning Technologies
- Designing Accessible Learning Content Programme – eLaHub
- Learning Technologies Awards 2025 winners – Learning Technologies
- Accessibility in Learning: From Compliance to Meaningful Inclusion – Learning Technologies Conference 2026
- Announcement of the Excellence in Accessible and Inclusive Digital Learning category – LinkedIn
- Excellence in Accessible and Inclusive Digital Learning – Learning Technologies Awards 2026 criteria
- What it takes to win: Turning L&D impact into award-winning stories – Learning Technologies
- 20 eLearning accessibility tips for different access needs – eLaHub Insights post
- eLaHub ultimate guide to accessible and inclusive eLearning
