The new open access article “REALIGN Toolkit: Reflexivity, Adaptability, Leadership, and Inclusion as Pillars of Responsible Research and Innovation” (Wellcome Open Res 2026, 11:8), co-authored by DIJ’s Celia Spoden, discusses how research and innovation can be made more ethically responsible for societal needs. It introduces a new toolkit — which focuses on the four main principles reflexivity, adaptability, leadership, inclusion (REALIGN) — for those involved in innovation to help ensure that new technologies are developed in ways that are fair, thoughtful, and truly useful to the people they are meant to serve. Based on three real-life examples of technologies designed to help people with frailty, including individuals with disabilities, and other vulnerable populations, the article makes recommendations to ensure key stakeholders are meaningfully involved from the very start of research and development. The article includes a discussion of Celia’s research at Tokyo’s Avatar Robot Café DAWN.