JoAnna Hansen is a driving force in the movement to make digital experiences truly accessible. With a rare blend of technical acumen, product insight, and strategic leadership, she has helped shape how one of the world’s most influential companies approaches accessibility and inclusive design. As head of accessibility for worldwide stores at Amazon, Ms. Hansen leads cross-functional teams across engineering, product and program management to ensure the company’s digital platforms are accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.
Ms. Hansen holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science with an emphasis on system design and interaction from Fleming College. Her education provided a strong technical foundation, while her early career mentors helped deepen her understanding of accessibility, disability issues and the importance of inclusive design. These influences shaped her approach to technology development and continue to guide her leadership style today.
In recognition of her impact, Ms. Hansen was honored with the Jim Thatcher Lifetime Achievement Award by Deque Systems Inc. She continues to advocate for accessibility to be prioritized from the start and is exploring new ways to collect data that accurately reflects the experiences of people with disabilities.
In her current role, Ms. Hansen has worked to embed accessibility into Amazon’s core digital operations. Her work has included building scalable systems and workflows that make it easier for teams to consider accessibility at every stage of the product lifecycle. By creating internal tools, defining best practices and fostering a shared culture of inclusion, she has helped Amazon better serve its global customer base while setting a high standard for corporate accessibility efforts.
Before stepping into her current role, Ms. Hansen managed the Kindle accessibility engineering team at Amazon. There, she focused on building more efficient and scalable processes to improve the accessibility of reading platforms and digital content. Her work helped streamline development while ensuring that users with disabilities had consistent access to Kindle’s growing library of products and features.
Ms. Hansen also was a senior product manager for accessibility within the Kindle organization. In that role, she collaborated closely with engineers, designers and researchers to develop inclusive products and long-term accessibility strategies. She helped define new accessibility benchmarks and fostered user-centered practices that improved the reading experience for people with a wide range of abilities.
Ms. Hansen’s career began at Blackboard, where she spent nearly a decade driving innovation in accessible educational technology. As an accessibility manager, design strategist and lead designer for outcomes assessment, she worked to bring inclusive thinking into all aspects of product development. She also held senior and associate product design roles and developed tools to support learners with varying needs.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Hansen worked as a technical eLearning specialist at Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology. There, she supported instructional technology and accessible learning systems, gaining practical experience that would serve as the foundation for her future in accessibility leadership.
Outside of her work at Amazon, Ms. Hansen is active in civic and community organizations. She serves as a coach for adaptive rock climbing with Catalyst Sports in Northern Virginia and as an adaptive ski instructor with the Outdoors for All Foundation in Washington. These volunteer roles reflect her commitment to inclusive communities and her belief that accessibility should extend beyond the workplace.