Buxton's work has been widely recognized. In 1995 he became the third recipient of the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society Award for contributions to research in computer graphics and human-computer interaction. In 2000 he was given the New Media Visionary of the Year Award at the Canadian New Media Awards. In 2001, The Hollywood Reporter named him one of the 10 most influential innovators in Hollywood. In 2002, Time Magazine named him one of the top 5 designers in Canada. Also in 2002, he was elected to the CHI Academy. In October, 2005, he and Gordon Kurtenbach received the "Lasting Impact Award", from ACM UIST 2005, for their 1991 paper, Issues in Combining Marking and Direct Manipulation Techniques. In 2008 he became the 10th recipient of the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award, "for fundamental contributions to the field of Computer Human Interaction." In 2008 he was elected Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), for his contributions to the field of human-computer interaction, and in 2011 he became the first recipient of the annual Grand Canadian Digital Media Pioneer Award.