The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990. This year, Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act turned 30. Even after all that time, bias and discrimination against candidates and employees with disabilities continues to be an important topic.
The unemployment rate for those with a disability (10.1%) in 2021 was about twice as high as the rate for those without a disability (5.1%) (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022). Coupled with increased laws and regulations regarding the protection of disabled job applicants and employees (e.g., U.S. EEOC, 2022), it is no surprise that academics, employers, and selection vendors are keen to understand where potential disability bias exists so it can be reduced or, ideally, eliminated.
Traditional face-to-face or video interviews in particular create potential barriers for individuals with disabilities, due to the well-documented stigma and prejudice against those with disabilities (Scior, 2011; Thompson et al., 2011). One study found that fake accountant job applicants that had disclosed a disability were 26% less likely to receive employment interest from the employer than those with no disability. Worse, experienced candidates with disabilities were 34% less likely to receive interest, despite presenting equally high levels of qualifications (Ameri et al., 2015). In addition to the bias held by hiring managers or recruiters, another concern is that certain selection methods create a very poor candidate experience for individuals with disabilities, causing them stress or anxiety and therefore stopping them from putting their best foot forward. For individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in particular, in-person or video interviews can be very stressful, with less than 10% believing they are given the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and abilities in this process (Cooper & Kennady, 2021).
Stuttering is another form of disability where traditional in-person and video interviews where the candidate has to speak may lead to stress and anxiety (Manning and Beck, 2013). One study found that people who stutter find their stuttering to be a “major handicap” in their working lives and over 70% thought that they had a decreased opportunity to be hired and promoted (Klein & Hood, 2004). Other disabilities, such as dyslexia and other learning and language disabilities may cause candidates to struggle with timed online selection assessments, so it is important to identify and remove these barriers (Hyland & Rutigliano, 2013).
Cooper and Mujtaba (2022) recommend alternative approaches that allow candidates with ASD to showcase their skills without having to verbally communicate them or properly interpret nonverbal cues.
The use of an online, untimed, chat-based interview – that is, our Ai Smart Interviewer – can not only help reduce discrimination against those with disabilities but also create a more positive candidate experience for them.
This format is particularly helpful for individuals with disabilities where traditional in-person interviews, video interviews, or timed assessments may cause stress or discomfort, therefore not allowing the candidate to express themselves freely and adequately demonstrate their skills.
Our Sapia Labs data science team has submitted a paper on reducing bias for people with disabilities to SIOP for 2024.
In the study, the data comes directly from our Smart Interviewer, which, as we said above, is an online untimed chat-based interview platform.
Candidates can give feedback after the interview process, and some candidates include self-report disability conditions in their feedback. While a number of different disabilities were mentioned, we had sufficient sample sizes to examine candidates with autism, dyslexia, and stutter. We compared their machine learning-generated final interview scores and yes/maybe/no hiring recommendations to a randomly sampled, demographically similar group of candidates that did not disclose a disability.
Effect sizes, 4/5ths ratios, and Z-tests revealed no adverse impact against candidates with autism, stutter or dyslexia. Additionally, feedback from these groups tended to indicate the experience was positive and allowed them the opportunity to do their best.
True diversity and inclusion starts with the way you hire. Our Ai Smart Interviewer allows people with disabilities and neurodiversity – real people, with real ambitions – to represent themselves fairly.
Walk into any store this festive season and you’ll see it instantly. The lights, the displays, the products are all crafted to draw people in. Retailers spend millions on campaigns to bring customers through the door.
But the real moment of truth isn’t the emotional TV ad, or the shimmering window display. It’s the human standing behind the counter. That person is the brand.
Most retailers know this, yet their hiring processes tell a different story. Candidates are often screened by rigid CV reviews or psychometric tests that force them into boxes. Neurodiverse candidates, career changers, and people from different cultural or educational backgrounds are often the ones who fall through the cracks.
And yet, these are the very people who may best understand your customers. If your store colleagues don’t reflect the diversity of the communities you serve, you create distance where there should be connection. You lose loyalty. You lose growth.
We call this gap the diversity mirror.
When retailers achieve mirrored diversity, their teams look like their customers:
Customers buy where they feel seen – making this a commercial imperative.
The challenge for HR leaders is that most hiring systems are biased by design. CVs privilege pedigree over potential. Multiple-choice tests reduce people to stereotypes. And rushed festive hiring campaigns only compound the problem.
That’s where Sapia.ai changes the equation: Every candidate is interviewed automatically, fairly, and in their own words.
With the right HR hiring tools, mirrored diversity becomes a data point you can track, prove, and deliver on. It’s no longer just a slogan.
David Jones, Australia’s premium department store, put this into practice:
The result? Store teams that belong with the brand and reflect the customers they serve.
Read the David Jones Case Study here 👇
As you prepare for festive hiring in the UK and Europe, ask yourself:
Because when your colleagues mirror your customers, you achieve growth, and by design, you’ll achieve inclusion.
See how Sapia.ai can help you achieve mirrored diversity this festive season. Book a demo with our team here.
Mirrored diversity means that store teams reflect the diversity of their customer base, helping create stronger connections and loyalty.
Seasonal employees often provide the first impression of a brand. Inclusive teams make customers feel seen, improving both experience and sales.
Adopting tools like AI structured interviews, bias monitoring, and data dashboards helps retailers hire fairly, reduce screening time, and build more diverse teams.
Organisations invest heavily in their employer brand, career sites, and EVP campaigns, especially to attract underrepresented talent. But without the right data, it’s impossible to know if that investment is paying off.
Representation often varies across functions, locations, and stages of the hiring process. Blind spots allow bias to creep in, meaning underrepresented groups may drop out long before offer.
Collecting demographic data is only step one. Turning it into insight you can act on is where real change and better hiring outcomes happen.
The Diversity Dashboard in Discover Insights, Sapia.ai’s analytics tool, gives you real-time visibility into representation, inclusion, and fairness at every stage of your talent funnel. It helps you connect the dots between your attraction strategies and actual hiring outcomes.
Key features include:
With the Diversity Dashboard, you can pinpoint where inclusion is thriving and where it’s falling short.
It’s also a powerful tool to tell your success story. Celebrate wins by showing which underrepresented groups are making the biggest gains, and share that progress with boards, executives, and regulators.
Powered by explainable AI and the world’s largest structured interview dataset, your insights are fair, auditable, and evidence-based.
Measuring diversity is the first step. Using that data to take action is where you close the Diversity Gap. With the Diversity Dashboard, you can prove your strategy is working and make the changes where it isn’t.
Book a demo to see the Diversity Dashboard in action.
Why neuroinclusion can’t be a retrofit and how Sapia.ai is building a better experience for every candidate.
In the past, if you were neurodivergent and applying for a job, you were often asked to disclose your diagnosis to get a basic accommodation – extra time on a test, maybe the option to skip a task. That disclosure often came with risk: of judgment, of stigma, or just being seen as different.
This wasn’t inclusion. It was bureaucracy. And it made neurodiverse candidates carry the burden of fitting in.
We’ve come a long way, but we’re not there yet.
Over the last two decades, hiring practices have slowly moved away from reactive accommodations toward proactive, human-centric design. Leading employers began experimenting with:
But even these advances have often been limited in scope, applied to special hiring programs or specific roles. Neurodiverse talent still encounters systems built for neurotypical profiles, with limited flexibility and a heavy dose of social performance pressure.
Hiring needs to look different.
Truly inclusive hiring doesn’t rely on diagnosis or disclosure. It doesn’t just give a select few special treatment. It’s about removing friction for everyone, especially those who’ve historically been excluded.
That’s why Sapia.ai was built with universal design principles from day one.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
It’s not a workaround. It’s a rework.
We tend to assume that social or “casual” interview formats make people comfortable. But for many neurodiverse individuals, icebreakers, group exercises, and informal chats are the problem, not the solution.
When we asked 6,000 neurodiverse candidates about their experience using Sapia.ai’s chat-based interview, they told us:
“It felt very 1:1 and trustworthy… I had time to fully think about my answers.”
“It was less anxiety-inducing than video interviews.”
“I like that all applicants get initial interviews which ensures an unbiased and fair way to weigh-up candidates.”
Some AI systems claim to infer skills or fit from resumes or behavioural data. But if the training data is biased or the experience itself is exclusionary, you’re just replicating the same inequity with more speed and scale.
Inclusion means seeing people for who they are, not who they resemble in your data set.
At Sapia.ai, every interaction is transparent, explainable, and scientifically validated. We use structured, fair assessments that work for all brains, not just neurotypical ones.
Neurodiversity is rising in both awareness and representation. However, inclusion won’t scale unless the systems behind hiring change as well.
That’s why we built a platform that:
Sapia.ai is already powering inclusive, structured, and scalable hiring for global employers like BT Group, Costa Coffee and Concentrix. Want to see how your hiring process can be more inclusive for neurodivergent individuals? Let’s chat.