She was sent to direct truck traffic in a parking lot she couldn't hear
A deaf worker says Amazon gave her 10 minutes of sign language help per shift.
A federal lawsuit filed on October 22, 2026 alleges Amazon Fulfillment Services steadily stripped a deaf employee of interpreter access at its Indianapolis facility - until she was left with just 10 minutes of communication support in every six-hour shift.
The worker, who has been deaf since birth and communicates primarily through American Sign Language (ASL), started at Amazon as a seasonal parcel packer and package scanner in November 2021, according to the complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.
Amazon knew she was deaf from day one. During her interview, she communicated through written notes. The company told her it had on-call translation services through HR, the complaint states.
For about the first seven weeks, Amazon provided an in-person ASL interpreter at most of her shifts, the filing alleges. But only because she asked. The complaint says she had to request interpreter services at the end of every single shift for the next one. Amazon never proactively offered an interpreter or sat down with her to talk through what she needed to do her job, the filing states.
Then, around mid-January 2022, the in-person interpreter vanished.
The complaint alleges Amazon replaced it with a virtual interpreting service running through a laptop that belonged to her direct manager. Nobody told her the change was coming. Nobody asked whether it would work.
The virtual system was clunky at best, according to the complaint. It required a three-way connection - the worker, a remote interpreter on video, and a third party who would speak English on her behalf to managers and coworkers. The laptop was stuck in the manager's office. And the remote interpreter frequently could not hear what was being said in meetings, the filing alleges, meaning the worker received little to no interpretation at all.
Between September 2022 and March 2023, the worker told her manager multiple times that the system was faulty - the laptop dropped its internet connection, the video lagged, and technical failures left her unable to follow what was happening in meetings, the complaint states.
Her manager said he would "talk to HR," the filing alleges. Nothing came of it.
Then things got worse.
In January 2023, a manager told the worker she would only be allowed to use the laptop for virtual interpreting during the first 10 minutes of her shift - for a pre-shift meeting, according to the complaint. After that, she was cut off for the remaining five hours and 50 minutes.
No communication with managers. No access to HR. No way to talk to coworkers. The filing alleges she was shut out of company meetings, missed procedural changes, and was not told about safety updates as they rolled out.
One incident in the complaint captures the alleged safety risk. The worker says she was assigned to direct traffic in the facility's parking lot - cars, Amazon vans, and semi-trucks moving in and out. She could not hear the vehicles around her. She could not use the radio her teammates relied on. She had no way to coordinate with drivers.
The complaint also alleges Amazon blocked her promotion. Around June 2022, every other worker in her hiring class moved up to permanent "Blue Badge" status - which comes with retirement contributions, pay increases, and health coverage, the filing states. The worker alleges she was told she would not get the promotion unless she agreed to work night shifts, a condition the complaint says was not imposed on anyone else in her group.
She emailed Amazon's HR department on July 11, 2022, asking for help with the conversion. The complaint says Amazon never responded. She stayed classified as a seasonal worker for more than a year before eventually getting Blue Badge status.
On or about August 4, 2024, the worker quit. The complaint frames her departure as a constructive discharge - where conditions become so intolerable that any reasonable employee would feel they had no real choice but to leave.
What allegedly happened next stands out. After reading her automated exit interview responses, an HR director conducted a follow-up interview with her through a video interpreter, the complaint states. About three weeks later, on or about August 24, 2024, the HR director emailed the worker stating that after a "thorough investigation," Amazon had "found a violation of Amazon policy or standards of conduct," the filing alleges. The worker says she has not heard from Amazon since.
The complaint brings four counts under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Indiana's Civil Rights Law: disparate treatment, failure to accommodate, failure to promote, and constructive discharge. The worker is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, back pay, front pay, reinstatement, and attorneys' fees. A jury trial has been demanded.
The filing also points to Amazon's public-facing materials promoting itself as a disability-friendly employer, including a webpage on hiring people with disabilities. The complaint calls this "virtue signaling."
For HR teams, the allegations trace a pattern that goes beyond a single missed accommodation request - they describe support that started adequate and quietly degraded over nearly three years, with no formal process to check in with the worker about whether her needs were being met.
The allegations in the complaint have not been tested, and no court has made any findings or rulings in the matter.
