Investigation
Most exclusion happens before anyone is employed, and before most people will ask for an accommodation. The process itself is the barrier.
Neurodivergent applicants — including people with ADHD, autism, and dyslexia — are often removed by selection steps that never touch the job. The pattern is consistent across ordinary recruiting and across the automated tools now sitting in front of it.
Unstructured interviews, group exercises, and “culture fit” score eye contact, small talk, and speed of reply. Those are weak predictors of the work and strong predictors of who can perform a neurotypical interaction under observation.
Essential functions get buried under traits: self-starter, rockstar communicator, thrives in ambiguity, fast-paced. Applicants who can do the job self-select out. Applicants who cannot, but interview well, stay in.
Game-based assessments and short clocks often measure processing speed, sensory load, or test anxiety. The ADA requires a test to reflect the skill it claims to measure, not the impairment.
Tools that rate facial expression, gaze, or voice can screen out autism and speech disabilities in people who are qualified. The Department of Justice has said so directly. A vendor’s dashboard does not move the duty off the employer.
Title I generally applies to employers with 15 or more employees. “Neurodivergent” is not a class by itself. Autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, and mental health conditions can be disabilities when they substantially limit a major life activity. The duty is to qualified applicants: people who can perform the essential functions with or without reasonable accommodation.
A test or selection tool that screens out a person because of disability is unlawful unless it is job-related and consistent with business necessity. It must be administered so the result reflects the skill, not the impairment. Known limitations require a reasonable change to the application process unless that change is an undue hardship. Using a vendor does not transfer any of this.
Before a conditional offer, disability-related questions and medical exams are tightly restricted. An employer may invite people to request a process accommodation, and may run a separate neurodiversity hiring path. It may not demand a diagnosis as the price of being considered.
Targeted neurodiversity programs — an alternate interview, a skills exercise, a supported first months — are lawful, and for some candidates they are the only door that opens. The ADA does not forbid recruiting that way.
They fail when they are a showcase. A cohort of autistic software applicants, carefully accommodated, while the default applicant tracking system still runs a timed game and a video score, is not an inclusive hiring practice. It is a side door. Everyone who does not know the side door exists, or who is ADHD rather than autistic, or who will not disclose, stays in the machine.
The default process has to be defensible on its own. The alternate path is an addition, not the compliance strategy.
None of this requires a diagnosis to be useful. Design reduces how often someone must disclose. The individual accommodation duty remains.
01
List essential functions as tasks and outcomes. Drop traits that are not required to do them. If spoken communication is essential, say in what setting and with whom. If it is not, stop testing for it.
02
A bounded task that resembles the job outperforms an unstructured conversation as evidence. Give the materials, the time box that matches the real work, and a way to ask a clarifying question.
03
Same questions, same order, shared in advance. Allow a written channel and additional time. Score answers against the functions, not warmth.
04
The posting should state whether there is a video, a timer, proctoring, or a game. Tell applicants how to request a change to the process without turning the application into a medical history.
05
Do not use tools that infer ability from face, gaze, tone, or “engagement.” Resume parsers that treat employment gaps as risk need the same scrutiny. Vendor validation paperwork is not your validation.
06
A targeted neurodiversity program is lawful. Asking applicants to diagnose themselves on the main application is not. An invitation to an alternative process is not a medical exam. The notes from that process do not belong in the ranking.
Foundations Technology is not a recruiting firm. Hiring belongs in the investigation because the same organizations that serve neurodivergent patients often select staff with tools that would not survive contact with those patients, and because an AI selection system is the same class of technology this practice governs elsewhere: useful only when someone can refuse the parts that are not the job, and still be evaluated on the parts that are.
Bring the posting, the assessment, and the vendor. That is enough to see whether the process measures the job.