Jillian Fortin

Jillian found accessibility the way Knowbility believes most people do: someone showed her. In 2008, she was a digital project manager building websites for a marketing firm when her boss — a Knowbility board member — sent her team to the Accessibility Internet Rally. She walked in knowing nothing about accessibility, and got pulled in the way AIR is designed to pull people in: first the craft, then the business case, and then the community of people with disabilities the work is actually for. "That's when it became real for me," she says.

That conviction became a career. Jillian has spent nearly two decades in accessibility and digital product management: serving twice on Knowbility's staff since 2010, joining its advisory board in 2020, and going on to become Director of Community Programs at Fable, the accessibility research platform where people with disabilities partner with the world's largest companies to test and co-design better products. Along the way she has taught accessibility workshops at SXSW, spoken at the M-Enabling Summit, and contributed to G3ict research on how people with disabilities experience digital innovation.

In 2026, when co-founder Sharron Rush decided it was time to step back after more than 25 years, she asked Jillian to lead the organization that first taught her the work. Sharron put it best: "It was like she went off to college — but came home to take on the family business."

As Executive Director, Jillian is leading Knowbility into its next chapter: making sure that as AI reshapes how the world builds technology, people with disabilities are included from the start — not retrofitted in later.