Access+Ability highlights some of the extraordinary research and designs developed over the past decade with and by people who span a wide range of physical, cognitive, and sensory abilities. Fueled by demand, as well as advances in research and technology, a proliferation of functional, life-enhancing products is creating unprecedented access.

The objects on view, many of which are still prototypes, represent the future of accessibility design. Low-tech designs that assist with daily routines, digital technology like eye-tracking devices for communicating and editing, sensors that stabilize tremors associated with Parkinson’s disease, innovations in all-terrain wheelchairs—these are some of the devices augmenting the potential for people to access the world.

Access+Ability was organized by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. The Carnegie Museum of Art presentation of Access+Ability is organized by Rachel Delphia, the Alan G. and Jane A. Lehman Curator of Decorative Arts and Design.