Preparing to interview: Someone with a disability

The rails What you may not ask

Do you have a disability? Not before a conditional offer, in any phrasing.
What is your diagnosis, prognosis, or medication? Accommodations run on function, never on medical detail.
Have you ever filed a workers' compensation claim, or how many sick days did you take at your last job?

The rails What you may ask

Can you perform the essential functions of this job, with or without a reasonable accommodation? This is the ADA's own approved question and it works for every candidate.
How would you perform a specific job task, asked of every candidate for the role.
Attendance and schedule requirements stated as requirements of the job.

General information for interview preparation as of August 2026, not legal advice. Your employment counsel owns your policies.

Avoid this The mistake most employers make

Treating an accommodation request as a negotiation instead of a process. It has a legal name, the interactive process, and it starts the moment they ask. Requesting full medical documentation as an opening move for two low-cost adjustments converts cooperation into gatekeeping and teaches your newest employee that asking costs them. Most accommodations cost little or nothing.

Instead What actually predicts performance

Work samples and structured questions, with the accommodation in place so you are measuring ability rather than the barrier. An interview format that blocks someone's best performance is measuring your format, not their capability.

Build the interview that does this

Worth knowing The evidence

Ability-first framing is not politeness, it is the legal frame: essential functions, with or without reasonable accommodation. Every question you build from that frame is defensible by construction.

What is actually available to you

Job Accommodation Network (askjan.org): free, expert, confidential guidance for employers, with typical costs.
Indiana Vocational Rehabilitation can coach, place, and sometimes fund accommodations.
EARN (askearn.org), DOL ODEP funded, publishes evidence-informed inclusive-interviewing practice.

Both chairs Practice the moment

Read their chair Do I say anything? “If I ask for anything, I become the complicated one.” Open → Practice yours The accommodation request “I do not know what I am required to provide, what I am allowed to ask, or what this will cost.” Open →

Reading the other chair is the fastest empathy training available, and it is free.

Before you move on: one if-then

When a candidate or new hire tells me what they need to do their best work,

I will… pick one or write your own

Stays on your device. Never sent to us. See all your commitments →

Naming a specific if-then plan improves follow-through by a medium-to-large margin over holding the same goal without one (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Effects and Processes, 2006; update Sheeran, Listrom and Gollwitzer, 2024).