DOJ Cautions Employers about Disability Considerations with Hiring Technologies

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DOJ’s Guidance

Consideration of different disabilities

An employer that designs its hiring technology to avoid discriminating against blind applicants must be aware that it may violate the ADA if its technology discriminates against applicants with autism or epilepsy.

Screening out people with disabilities

Although employers can use qualification standards that are job-related and consistent with business necessity, employers must provide reasonable accommodations to allow applicants to meet those standards, unless doing so would be an undue hardship. Thus, employers should examine hiring technologies to assess whether they screen out individuals with disabilities who can perform the essential functions of a job with or without required reasonable accommodations.

Testing technologies

Under the ADA, employers must ensure that pre-hiring tests or games measure only the relevant skills and abilities of an applicant, rather than reflection the applicant’s impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills that the tests do not seek to measure.

For example, an applicant to a school district with a vision impairment may get passed over for a staff assistant job because they do poorly on a computer-based test that requires them to see, even though that applicant is able to do the job.

Examples of reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities

A reasonable accommodation is a change in the way things are usually done to give equal opportunities to a person with a disability in applying for a job, performing a job, or accessing the benefits and privileges of employment.

Some possible examples could include:

• Telling applicants about the type of technology being used and how the applicants will be evaluated.
• Providing enough information to applicants so that they may decide whether to seek a reasonable accommodation.
• Providing and implementing clear procedures for requesting reasonable accommodations and making sure that asking for one does not hurt the applicant’s chance of getting the job.