How to Ask for an Accommodation on an AI Interview

Name the Barrier, Not the Diagnosis

You are entitled to ask, and the request is what starts the employer's duty. The ADA requires reasonable accommodation for a qualified applicant with a disability, short of undue hardship ¹, and the trigger is a sentence that ties the barrier to a disability: "the timed video format is a barrier for me because of a disability; is a written or untimed alternative available." The condition's name does no work here; an employer may ask follow-up questions about the limitation.

If you would not call it a disability, say the format is a barrier because of a medical condition instead. Either wording does the same work in the request, and you do not have to settle that question about yourself before you ask.

Ask for one of these by name rather than describing a general need:

• More time on a timed video or game-based section
• A written response in place of a recorded video answer
• A live conversation with a person instead of the async round
• A retake, where the first attempt broke down for a reason unrelated to what the assessment measures

Pick the alternative that removes the actual barrier and ask for that, by name, rather than asking the employer to guess what would help.

What the Law Actually Requires From Them

The regulation behind your request is narrower than "make it accessible." 29 CFR 1630.11 requires a covered employer to administer a test so the result reflects the skill it measures rather than a sensory, manual or speaking limitation the test was never built to measure ². That is the floor under a request for extra time, a written substitute for a spoken answer, or a different input method: protecting what the score means, not handing anyone an easier test.

Employers read the identical regulation from the other chair, and it is worth seeing what they were told to offer: what an AI-based assessment owes a disabled applicant under the ADA works through the same rule from the hiring side, including where a request would remove the very skill being tested and a different route to the same evidence is the honest answer instead. Reading that side is not extra homework; it tells you what a reasonable answer from a recruiter actually sounds like, so you can tell a considered no from a form-letter one.

One caution before you quote anything you find online: the EEOC's own technical-assistance document walking through the ADA and algorithmic assessments was pulled from eeoc.gov in January 2025 and has not returned ³. The regulation it explained was not repealed and has not changed; only the agency's plain-language explainer came down. If a page you're reading still links to that guidance as current, the link is dead and the advice built around it may be too. In some states, disability law reaches further than the federal floor, so it is worth a search for your own state's rules alongside the ADA before assuming the federal one is the only rule in play.

Send the Request Before You're Scheduled

Send the request as soon as you see the format, not after a bad attempt at it. A short message does the job: name the barrier, the fix, and the disability behind it. On at least one major interview platform, the accommodation route is a labeled button on the instructions screen, and clicking it does not decide anything on the spot: it opens a request routed to the department of the employer that manages the hiring process ⁴.

"Available" and "identical to the original" are not the same promise, and that handoff is worth understanding before you click anything, because the button only starts a conversation. The vendor's own published statement says a "Request Accommodations" option relaxes time limits for a qualified disability, and that the employer's team decides whether to grant the exemption, a process the vendor describes as outside its control ⁴. On that same platform, taking relaxed time limits also drops the game-based section from the assessment entirely, so ask what changes along with what gets relaxed: a different assessment is not automatically a longer version of the same one. If the instructions screen offers no such button at all, do not read that as a closed door; write the request to the recruiter directly instead, and treat the absence of a self-service option as one more thing worth asking about.

Where the Request Goes When the Posting Says Nothing

Most postings and invitation emails name nobody to write to, so start with whoever sent the invite and ask them to route it: "Who handles accommodation requests for this stage?" is an ordinary question, and a well-run process has an answer ready. If the reply is silence after a few business days, escalate in writing to the general recruiting or HR inbox on the company's careers page, and keep a copy of what you sent.

Tying the barrier to a disability is all the explaining a request needs up front; you do not owe an essay before it gets answered. That paper trail matters less as proof of anything and more as a plain record if the process stalls: a dated email saying what you asked for and when is the difference between "I never heard back" and a specific gap you can point to. If the company runs a formal HR function separate from the recruiter you have been emailing, address a second copy there once a week has passed; a request that only ever sat in one inbox is the easiest kind to lose track of. Whether asking changes how a panel actually sees you afterward is a separate question with its own mechanics rather than a matter of manners: does asking for an accommodation hurt your chances walks through where the request typically lands before it reaches anyone deciding.

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