Asking for an Assessment Accommodation Before You Start

If you need extra time, a screen reader, breaks, or a different format for a technical hiring assessment, the request goes to the employer's recruiter, not to the assessment platform — and on most platforms the main lever stops working the moment you press Start. This article covers who is responsible under US law, what HackerRank, CodeSignal, Codility, and Karat each document that they can change, what you are not required to disclose, and the one interaction nobody documents: accommodations that require behavior proctoring software is built to flag.

Scope: US employment law, verified October 5, 2026. Rules differ outside the US, and this is general information rather than legal advice.

Who owes you the accommodation

The employer does. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's guidance for job applicants states that "employers are required to provide 'reasonable accommodation' -- appropriate changes and adjustments -- to enable you to be considered for a job opening," and that "the ADA requires that employers give application tests in a format or manner that does not require use of your impaired skill, unless the test is designed to measure that skill" (EEOC, Job Applicants and the ADA).

That matters because most search results for "testing accommodations" describe a different legal regime. The Department of Justice's testing-accommodations guidance applies to testing entities offering exams "for applications, licensing, certification, or credentialing for secondary or postsecondary education, professional, or trade purposes" (ADA.gov, Testing Accommodations). A HackerRank screen for a backend role is not that. The detailed rules you will find there — deference to a qualified professional's documentation, the prohibition on flagging scores as accommodated — are Title III rules for licensing and admissions exams. Do not assume a hiring platform operates under them.

Federal guidance on the narrower question of AI-driven hiring tools got thinner in early 2025. The EEOC removed its May 2022 technical assistance document on AI and potential ADA violations, along with a May 2023 Title VII document; the Department of Labor and OFCCP removed related guidance. As Cooley's analysts put it at the time, "federal, state and local anti-discrimination laws still apply to AI use" (Cooley, February 2025). The removed documents were interpretive aids. The underlying ADA obligation on the employer did not change.

The window closes when you press Start

This is the practical fact most candidates learn too late. The accommodation mechanisms built into assessment platforms are largely configured against an unstarted session.

HackerRank documents two separate mechanisms. "Time Accommodation" applies a preset or custom percentage increase and can be set before invites go out or afterward, "as long as the candidate has not yet started the test"; the increased duration then "appears in the test invite email and on the test landing page before the candidate starts." A second mechanism, "Extra Time," can be added in minutes "during the test, after the candidate submits, or after the test ends," but it requires a test owner or someone with editor access to act, and for tests containing DevOps or Cloud questions HackerRank warns not to add time after submission because the virtual machines are purged (HackerRank, Extend Test Duration for Candidates).

Codility is stricter. Its guidance for candidates with disabilities describes a test sponsor adjusting the time limit from the candidate report, and notes this applies to "non-started sessions" (Codility, Best Practices for Candidates with Disabilities, updated January 27, 2026).

The operational conclusion is the same across platforms: send the request when the invitation arrives, and do not open the assessment to "have a look" first. Opening a timed session can consume the cleanest path to the accommodation you asked for.

What each platform documents it can change

These are vendor-documented capabilities, not entitlements. In every case the employer decides whether to use them.

HackerRank's candidate-facing accessibility page claims WCAG 2.1 AA conformance and full keyboard access, and routes requests plainly: "Please contact the recruiter of the company that invited you to take the test to request a time extension" (HackerRank, Approach to Accessibility). CodeSignal documents compatibility with "Dolphin and JAWS screen readers," recommends NVDA with Firefox on Windows and VoiceOver on macOS, and says assessment time "can be extended flexibly depending on the needs of the test-taker/candidate" (CodeSignal, Accessibility features, updated February 7, 2025).

Two things follow. Where screen reader support is specified down to the product name, test that exact combination in a practice environment rather than assuming your usual setup works. And where a platform offers a direct request channel — Codility's in-product link, CodeSignal's support team — using it does not replace telling the recruiter, because the recruiter is the one who can reschedule, extend, or substitute the assessment.

What you are not required to disclose

The EEOC is explicit that timing is yours: "the ADA does not require that an applicant inform an employer about the need for a reasonable accommodation at any particular time, so this information need not be volunteered on an application form or in an interview." It is equally explicit that asking has consequences for what the employer may request: "if your disability and need for accommodation are not obvious, the employer may ask you for reasonable documentation explaining the disability and why an accommodation is needed" (EEOC, Job Applicants and the ADA).

Reasonable documentation of a functional need is not the same as a diagnosis or a medical file. Some vendors state their own floor: Karat commits that "we will never require a candidate to disclose their personal medical information as a part of an accommodation request" (Karat, Customer FAQ). Ask what specifically is needed, and describe the functional limitation and the adjustment that addresses it rather than volunteering records.

A separate disclosure question runs the other way — what the employer must tell you about automated scoring of your assessment. State and local rules vary, and we cover the current picture in what AI hiring rules entitle candidates to know.

The interaction nobody documents

Platform accessibility pages describe assistive technology support. Platform proctoring pages describe what gets monitored and flagged. Neither set addresses what happens when an accommodation requires the behavior the other system treats as suspicious.

That gap is not hypothetical. A University of Washington qualitative study of 16 US university students who all held official disability testing accommodations and had used online proctoring within the prior two years, published on arXiv in November 2025, reports false flags and interruptions for participants using screen magnifiers, optical character recognition, and dictation software, because the proctoring systems were not designed to integrate with those tools. Participants with ADHD or autism described stimming being treated as suspicious. Several reported being unable to take medically necessary breaks. Gaze monitoring surfaced repeatedly, with one participant worried about being flagged for looking away at the scratch paper the exam itself provided. The authors also found flag handling inconsistent, with the same behavior drawing different responses from different proctors (Surveillance and Disability in Online Proctored Exams, arXiv, November 2025).

That study covers academic proctoring, not hiring assessments, so treat it as evidence that the failure mode is real and documented rather than as a measurement of any specific hiring platform. The mechanics transfer, though: hiring proctoring monitors the same signals. CodeSignal's proctored assessments prompt candidates to share "camera, microphone, and screen" for the duration (CodeSignal, What is proctoring and how does it work), and gaze-direction monitoring is a live question across the category, which we examine in what coding assessments can and cannot infer from eye movement.

There is one reassuring piece of documented behavior: CodeSignal states that "proctoring has no impact on the score you receive; all scores are calculated automatically by the CodeSignal system." Proctoring output is a review artifact, not a score deduction. But a review artifact still reaches a human, which is why it is worth naming the behaviors in advance. For what the downstream process actually looks like, see what happens after a coding assessment flags you.

So when you request an accommodation, say what the recruiter's reviewers will see. If you will be dictating, magnifying, consulting a physical reference, moving in ways that read as restless, or stepping away on a schedule, put that in the same message as the request and ask that it be noted for whoever reviews the session. That is a short sentence now instead of an argument later.

What this does not get you

An accommodation request is not a guarantee. Under Title I the employer may decline an accommodation that imposes undue hardship, and may decline to change what the assessment measures — the EEOC's format requirement carves out tests "designed to measure that skill." Timelines are also discretionary in hiring: unlike the licensing-exam context, where DOJ guidance requires testing entities to respond "in a timely manner" within the same testing cycle, a hiring accommodation moves at the recruiter's pace, which is a reason to ask early rather than a lever you can pull.

Nor does it get you the Title III protections. The prohibition on flagging scores as accommodated sits in the licensing and admissions regime, not in employment assessment, and no hiring platform reviewed here documents an equivalent commitment.

And it is worth being clear about a separate line: an accommodation adjusts how the assessment reaches you. It does not change the employer's rules about outside assistance during the assessment. Those are independent, and asking for one does not authorize the other.

The short version

Ask the recruiter in writing, as soon as the invitation lands and before you open the assessment. Describe the functional need and the specific adjustment, not a diagnosis. Name the behaviors a proctoring review will see, and ask that they be recorded alongside the accommodation. Check whether your specific assistive technology is the one the platform documents, and rehearse it somewhere untimed.

If you want the other half of the picture — what the employer has to tell you about how your assessment is scored, and what you can ask for when the interview itself is automated — start with AI hiring rules in 2026 and what you are entitled to know.