Recruitment AI has a Disability Problem: questions employers should be asking to ensure fairness in recruitment

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have the potential to dramatically impact the lives and life chances of people with disabilities seeking employment and throughout their career progression. While these systems are marketed as highly capable and objective tools for decision making, a growing body of research demonstrates a record of inaccurate results as well as inherent disadvantages for women and people of colour (Broussard, 2018; Noble, 2018; O’Neil 2017). Assessments of fairness in Recruitment AI for people with disabilities have thus far received little attention or have been overlooked (Guo et al., 2019; Petrick, 2015; Trewin, 2018; Trewin et al. 2019; Whittaker et al., 2019). This white paper details the impacts to and concerns of disabled employment seekers using AI systems for recruitment, and provides recommendations on the steps employers can take to ensure innovation in recruitment is also fair to all users. In doing so, we further the point that making systems fairer for disabled employment seekers ensures systems are fairer for all.