Behind Every “Unhinged” Interview Story Is a Broken System
- Ryan Taffe
- 10 hours ago
- 3 min read
Let’s be honest: the job market is tough right now for almost everyone.But for people with disabilities, it’s more than tough—it’s exhausting, disheartening, and often, completely inequitable.
We hear stories every day from talented job seekers who do everything right—earn degrees, build skills, show up ready to contribute—only to hit walls that shouldn’t exist in 2025. Inaccessible websites. Applications that time out before assistive tech can read them. Employers who don’t know how (or don’t care) to provide accommodations. Interviewers whose biases show up before a single question is asked.
And now, there’s a new player in the mix: AI hiring tools that promise to remove bias, but often just learn and replicate it faster.
These are the realities people with disabilities are navigating—not hypotheticals, not exceptions.
Behind the “Unhinged Interviews”
“I went Through 76 interviews to land a clinical placement job at the peak of Covid-19”
That’s how Andrea Dalzell, a nurse and disability advocate, described her experience on the Changing Minds & Changing Lives Podcast.
“Nobody’s going to openly discriminate. But bias plays a part in how you interview, regardless if you acknowledge it or not.”
Seventy-six interviews.That’s not just perseverance—that’s proof of how deeply bias can shape opportunity. Andrea had the skills, the credentials, the passion. But what she didn’t have was the benefit of being perceived without bias.
When Technology Amplifies Bias Instead of Removing It
AI is supposed to make hiring fairer. In practice, it often makes it worse.
Just ask Travis Davis, who discovered after an interview that an internal AI transcript—accidentally sent to him—contained the raw comments interviewers made about him once he’d left the call.
It’s the kind of moment that makes you pause. We’ve entered an era where bias isn’t just human—it’s automated. Algorithms can now echo and amplify discrimination, sometimes with even less accountability.
For candidates already walking a fine line between disclosure and self-protection, these technologies add another layer of risk: being judged, flagged, or filtered out by a system that was never designed with them in mind.
The Everyday Barriers No One Talks About
Behind every “unhinged” story is a pattern:
Job portals that don’t work with screen readers.
Interview scheduling platforms that can’t be navigated without a mouse.
Recruiters who assume a gap in employment means “unreliable.”
Managers who say they “don’t see disability” and think it’s a compliment.
It’s not one bad actor—it’s a system still catching up to what inclusion really means.
A 2024 Harvard Business Review article, “How to Improve the Hiring Process for Disabled Candidates,” identified three critical fixes that employers can make today:
Address bias directly. Focus on actual skills and job requirements—not assumptions about ability or work history.
Create safety for disclosure. Make it clear that accommodations aren’t just allowed, but encouraged.
Commit beyond compliance. Inclusion isn’t a checkbox—it’s a culture of belonging and accountability.
Simple, right? But as Andrea and Travis show us, the gap between knowing and doing remains painfully wide.
The Human Cost of Bias
When a candidate is left waiting for hours without the accommodations they requested—or told to “speak up” or “not sound weird”—the damage is more than an unhinged interview.
It’s emotional.
It’s cumulative.
And it’s entirely avoidable.
The message many job seekers with disabilities receive—whether through a dismissive tone or a broken process—is: You’re not worth the effort.
That’s not just bad business. It’s a moral failure.
What Employers Can Do Right Now
Here’s the truth: inclusion isn’t complicated—it’s intentional.And the solutions don’t require a new platform or buzzword. They require empathy, awareness, and action.
Offer accommodations early. Make it part of your standard communication before interviews even happen.
Train interviewers. Not just on the law, but on perception, tone, and empathy.
Audit your tech. Ensure your hiring tools and AI systems don’t reinforce bias.
Encourage safe disclosure. Create trust by listening without judgment.
Humanize the process. Real stories—like Andrea’s and Travis’s—belong in your DEI training.
Because This Isn’t Just a Hiring Issue
It’s a humanity issue.
Behind every job application is a person—someone who wants to contribute, grow, and be seen for what they bring, not what others assume.
At Disability Solutions, we believe real inclusion begins with listening—to stories, to feedback, to the lived experiences that reveal what needs to change. That's why we conduct and publish the Disability At Work survey and report (2025 survey finders coming soon).
But we also want to hear the full story, the human story. So, if you’re a job seeker with a disability who’s been through an interview or accommodation request that still makes you shake your head, we want to hear from you.
Share your 'unhinged' story: https://go.disabilitytalent.org/share-your-unhinged-stories (anonymously if you prefer).
Because until we name the bias—human or artificial—we can’t dismantle it. And until every interview feels fair, no workplace can truly call itself inclusive.
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