Candidate controversy: why HR has an AI powered disability problem
§§Amid the many effects of AI in the workplace, a growing scandal has gone unnoticed – this is the use by HR of AI-driven tools for recruitment which discriminate against people with disabilities
Unless the unintended consequences of AI-powered HR technology on people with disabilities are urgently addressed, hundreds of millions of workers worldwide face lifelong economic and societal exclusion.
Just imagine you lose your dream job because your stammer caused you to go 15 seconds over the three minutes permitted for the video interview – and the algorithm automatically discards your application. Or you have a facial disfigurement from an acid burn, but the AI tool doesn’t recognise your face as real.
Your visual impairment makes eye contact tricky, but you can’t find any way to request that the video assessment disregard the way your eyes ‘dance’. Your ADHD means you ‘fidget’ in front of your screen and the surveillance tech assumes you aren’t working – or accuses you of cheating.
Or you usually lip-read at interviews, but this robot interviewer is lipless.
You have used a wheelchair since you were four, but the virtual reality test drops you walking into an ancient tomb to assess your problem-solving skills. You struggle to even imagine standing up, never mind doing so while solving complex puzzles.
And how will you know if your personality profile, produced by scanning everything you have ever put online, tells the recruiter you belong to a Parkinson’s Disease self-help network? Is that why your application got nowhere?
Applicants discarded
AI recruitment tools have become the first line of defence against high-volume online hiring. A recruiter’s priority is to discard as many applicants as possible, as quickly and as cheaply as possible, to narrow down to the talent deemed worthy of consideration by human beings. And an increasingly controversial multi-billion-dollar industry stands ready to help.
Research by the German Public Broadcaster BR revealed that a candidate’s Behavioural Personality Profile, produced after a one-minute video interview by Retorio (a sales coaching platform), changed significantly depending on their appearance. They lost 10 points just by putting on glasses but gained 20 points by putting on a head scarf.
What if that camera were to spot your hearing aid, wheelchair, or arthritic hands? Would you score as more or less agreeable, neurotic, or conscientious? Nobody knows – and that’s a problem. BR didn’t test for ‘disability indicators’. Neither did the developer, nor the German corporations that use the technology.
Thankfully, those influencing responsible AI have begun to address race and gender bias. But the world’s 1.3 billion people with disabilities are still so excluded from this debate that no-one has even noticed they aren’t there. It appears that neither the AI creators nor their HR customers understand disability discrimination.
Making equality possible
Creators often claim they have removed human bias by dropping their AI tool into a standardised process that treats every job seeker the same. However standard processes are by definition inherently discriminatory – recruiters must make reasonable adjustments at every stage of the process if they want to employ disabled people fairly and on an equal basis. We treat people differently to treat them fairly.
Imagine insisting that the next Stephen Hawkins climbs stairs to an interview just because every candidate is required to do so.
This is not just about the data which, let’s face it, is always ‘disability biased’. Biased data, while deeply problematic, is different from the concrete reality of discriminatory behaviours and policies, such as refusing to adapt an automated talent acquisition process so that a job seeker with a disability can be accurately assessed.
What we have here is a ‘market failure’ – neither the HR buyers nor their tech suppliers seems to know how to design a recruitment process that is both barrier-free for people with similar access needs (such as accessible game controls) and flexible enough for individuals who need things to be done differently so they can demonstrate their potential (e.g. bypassing psychometric tests which are not validated for the presenting candidate’s autism).
Looking to the law
AI creators are not legally obliged to prove their products are ‘safe’ for any disadvantaged job seekers. But regulators are catching up. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has published guidance that indicates that AI-facilitated disability discrimination is now on its agenda. The EU AI Act helpfully categorises HR Technology as ‘high risk’. And the European Disability Forum is hoping that emerging EU guidance and standards regarding AI accountability will also protect the human rights of people with disabilities.
In California, HR tech giant Workday is facing a lawsuit alleging that its AI-powered screening tools discriminate against job applicants based on disability, age and race. The plaintiff, Derek Mobley,
claims he was rejected from over 100 jobs by AI tools that prioritise or reject applicants based on protected characteristics rather than qualifications. In May 2025, the case became a collective action suit and is still ongoing, allowing applicants with disabilities such as anxiety or depression to opt in.
The case highlights not just the potentially negative consequences for people with disabilities of AI-powered hiring tools, but also the hidden nature of the discrimination.
Interestingly, a leading HR tech developer, HireView, recently argued that it is the employer that should be held responsible if a candidate claims discrimination when HireView data was used to justify the decision not to hire them. It’s not every day that a supplier sends such a ‘Buyers Beware’ alert to potential customers. If only every employer responded by requiring all their HR tech suppliers to prove they have taken the necessary steps to mitigate potential harm to disadvantaged job seekers.
Unhelpful waffle
Before this can happen, I guess we need to stop the unhelpful waffle about vaguely defined ‘inclusion’ and bring the conversation back to some ‘disability equality basics’. These might include addressing those situations when you can’t ask for an interview to be extended because your speech patterns differ from the norm, when you aren’t told how the employer plans to assess you and therefore cannot ask for those accommodations to that assessment that you require, or when you can’t complete the application form using a screen reader.
We need to bring some human reality to the worldview of those influencing the ethical and responsible AI debate – in the knowledge that the experience of disability is intrinsic to that reality.
AI developers and their HR customers need to seriously – seriously – up their game.
