Disabled workers are getting screened out of digital hiring

Nearly 35 years after the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting all federal diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts — as well as the demand that all government workers return to offices — threatens to reverse fair access for people put on the margins, including disabled workers.

The administration’s moves highlight that accommodations for disabled people in the workplace are as crucial as ever. But even getting to the point of employment can be taxing. People with disabilities of all kinds must first navigate the job application process, which requires its own accommodations and can often leave folks worn out — or even screened out entirely.

Specifically, big questions are emerging about the equity of digitized hiring assessments and the impact they have on disabled people. A recent report, Screened Out: The Impact of Digitized Hiring Assessments on Disabled Workers, from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), found that “most of the digitized assessments were discriminatory and perpetuated biases.”

“It’s not going to be the best person for the job or the most capable person for the job, it’s going to be who can beat the test,” said one of the study’s participants whose experiences informed the report.

Factors impacting accessibility in these tests include, but are not limited to: lack of transparent accommodations (or lack of accommodations at all); coloration that hinders comprehension for low-vision or color-blind participants; gamified or overly stimulating elements that are overwhelming for people with cognitive disabilities; and choice of language that hinders understanding (like English captions for videos instead of offering an American Sign Language alternative for ASL-native deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals; most people born deaf prefer to receive information via ASL, not captioning, because it’s their native language, a fact especially true during high-pressure job assessments).

“As someone who has multiple disabilities myself, facing a lack of accessibility is a deeply frustrating experience,” said Ariana Aboulafia, an attorney by training who leads the disability rights in technology policy project at the CDT, a non-profit working on shaping technology policy and architecture to promote peoples’ rights. “I don’t necessarily think that the screening out is intentional. I think it’s more likely that it’s a result of a lack of consideration of disabled people as job seekers.”

Here, Aboulafia referred to inclusive design, or the process of “designing things with disabled people in mind from the outset,” she said. That means including a diverse range of disabled individuals in the creation, development, deployment and auditing of these tools.

One organization working on inclusive design for the blind and visually impaired community is Miami Lighthouse. Jorge Hernandez, job readiness coach and senior technology manager at Miami Lighthouse, is one of the people who helps design and audit these assessments, among other technologies. Hernandez and his team oversee a variety of efforts: making sure forms and headings are logically ordered for seamless navigation; error alerts actually direct you to the error you need to fix; that there are accessibility statements, and those statements include contact information where you can quickly get in touch with someone. “The most important part here is, how can we actually get the information to us? You can’t see it. We need to hear it,” said Hernandez, who is blind. “Can we submit that application just like anybody else — fully completed with no errors?”

Virginia Jacko, CEO of Miami Lighthouse, joined the organization about 20 years ago after losing her eyesight while working as an executive at Purdue University. The organization works with major airlines, cruise lines and other major companies, and offers a scorecard with 10 parameters applying mostly to ADA requirements. They can score hiring assessment tools, websites, menus, reservation systems, call centers and more for blind and visually impaired accessibility.

While bias against the disability community existed prior to the prevalence of digitized hiring assessments (which 83% of employers use to some degree), the modern standard perpetuates existing biases by simply failing to think about differently abled people ahead of time. Aboulafia calls this “technology-facilitated disability discrimination.”

Test developers and psychometricians are generally behind the creation of these assessments, according to Dr. Craig Ellis, head industrial and organizational psychologist and psychometrician at digitized hiring assessment vendor HighMatch. Ellis said it starts with academic literature, which practitioners incorporate into test development.

“The biggest area where digital assessments have room to improve, and it’s certainly been a focus for us, is creating an environment where the candidate feels as though the assessment experience was not designed for somebody else,” said Ellis.

When developing a new test, Ellis said HighMatch selects several samples from the population, has them complete the assessment and gathers test taker feedback. HighMatch released a new technology platform to host all of their assessments within the last couple of years, which has modern accommodations cooked into it. It’s compatible with screen readers, can print off written versions of assessments, offers flexible timers and can queue up assessment content on preferred device types (such as mobile or tablet, and across a range of operating systems and technologies). “The tools are out there for assessment vendors to get pretty advanced,” said Ellis.

However, not all vendors are created equal. “It is a diverse industry with varying levels of quality and rigor,” he said. Meanwhile, the CDT found there’s generally very limited transparency about how these tools are being used and what accommodations are available.

As for where the onus lies, Michal Luria, one of the researchers behind the CDT report, said, “They share responsibility, both vendor and employer.”

Ellis said it’s up to employers to communicate accommodations. “Assessment vendors are representatives of the organization, so an assessment vendor typically does not have the freedom to communicate directly with candidates about accommodations that they may need.”

Creating a safe space for people to voice their needs is also critical. More than half (56%) of disabled workers do not disclose their need for accommodations, with 43% saying it’s because they don’t feel safe disclosing, according to The State of Workplace Inclusion & Accommodation report from workplace personalization platform Inclusively.

“Asking for supporting tools is essentially revealing their disability, a thing that people with disabilities, from what we heard, are very conscious of in a job seeking process,” said Luria. Even without asking for accommodations, the CDT found that test takers felt they were exposing their disability against their explicit choice simply by failing in such a way that made their disability obvious.

Digitized hiring processes are not all bad, with the CDT finding positives like being able to see a question in advance as part of preparation or asynchronously complete parts of the test.

“Has there been progress? Absolutely,” said Jacko. “But, I worry about outstanding employees that do not get the chance to interview because of the digital requirements.”

Jacko knows the professional who runs the sound system at Miami International Airport. He’s totally blind, she said, and has been working in the role for about 15 years. “I believe that same person, if today he were applying at Miami International Airport, and they were using the assessment tool that is so frequently misused, he would not have been hired,” she said.

Jatin Nayyar, business development representative at Hirevue and a disability advocate with Tourette Syndrome, said that stress is a big trigger for his disability. “The ability to complete assessments digitally really did alleviate much of that stress,” he said. Even though he can’t control his disability, he knows that more noticeable tics can contribute to someone’s unconscious bias against him.

Moving forward, the CDT recommends having a human review every element of the test and larger hiring process. They also recommend being transparent about how all tests are used to assess candidates and making sure each element of the test is actually essential for the job (for example, if an intensely timed test is not essential, remove it).

“We also encourage employers to make sure that they follow basic and well-established accessibility guidelines. We didn’t see those in many of the tools,” said Luria. “Things like having screen readers, having alt text for images, these are pretty standard in most web design and we expect at very minimum to see those.”

Thinking about his Tourette’s, Nayyar — who is just one year out of college — said, “It’s made me a stronger son, a stronger brother, a stronger employee, a stronger boxer. I wouldn’t be able to have the strength and the courage to do probably 99% of the things I was able to achieve today if it wasn’t for my disability.” People in the hiring world, he said, need to realize the different perspectives that disabled people offer. “If you’re working in a department where everyone has the same perspective, you’re only going to get one thing done,” said Nayyar.