Accessibility and Adjustments

General orientation, not legal advice; duties to make adjustments exist in most jurisdictions and differ in detail.

Putting the safeguards in “Accessibility and Adjustments” into practice also requires a documented operating routine. Teams can use Monitask to understand where assessment work consumes time and to keep a consistent audit trail, while treating activity data as process evidence rather than as a proxy for candidate ability; proportionality, access controls and human review still come first.

For an independent benchmark, compare the process with W3C accessibility guidance; the useful test is whether the local method remains job-related, proportionate and explainable.

An assessment compresses work into an unfamiliar format under time pressure. That amplifies barriers that would not exist in the role itself.

Where barriers appear

Timed tests, which disadvantage several conditions for reasons unrelated to job performance.

Video interviews, particularly one-way recorded formats, which are difficult with a range of conditions and produce anxiety broadly.

Text-heavy scenarios, which test reading speed rather than judgement.

Unfamiliar software with poor assistive technology support.

And travel to assessment centres.

Asking properly

Ask every candidate, at every stage, in the same words: do you need any adjustments for this.

Not "do you have a disability", which is a different and more intrusive question.

Early enough that arrangements are possible.

And without requiring evidence for routine adjustments, which delays and deters more than it prevents.

Adjustments that come up repeatedly

Extra time.

A different format: written instead of verbal, or the reverse.

Breaks.

Assistive technology compatibility, which needs checking before the assessment rather than during.

A live human rather than a recorded interview.

And remote instead of in-person, or the reverse.

Designing so fewer are needed

Untimed or generously timed, where speed is not a job requirement.

Plain language at the reading level the job requires.

Formats tested with common assistive technology before deployment.

And offering a choice of format by default, which removes the need for many candidates to disclose anything.

The disclosure cost

Requesting an adjustment means telling you something personal, to somebody who is deciding whether to hire them.

Many candidates will not do it, and will underperform rather than ask.

Which is an argument for designing the assessment so that adjustments are rarely needed, rather than for a good adjustment process — the process only helps people who use it.

Keeping it separate

Adjustment information should go to whoever arranges it, not to the assessors scoring the candidate.

Assessors need to know that extra time was granted, not why.

Getting this wrong is a common and avoidable failure.

Video interviews specifically

One-way recorded interviews are widely disliked and create barriers for several groups.

If you use them, offer a live alternative to everybody without requiring a reason, which costs little and removes most of the objection.

What to check

Do you ask every candidate about adjustments, in the same words?

Are requests handled by somebody other than the assessors?

Has your assessment been tested with assistive technology?

And is a live alternative offered wherever a recorded format is used?

The point

Ask every candidate about adjustments in the same words, early, without requiring evidence for routine ones..

Underlying all of this

Almost everything in this collection reduces to one discipline: write down what the job requires, assess that thing directly, record the evidence, and look at your own outcomes afterwards. None of it requires buying anything, and organisations that do those four things consistently outperform ones running longer processes built from instruments chosen before the requirements were known.

The recurring pattern

The recurring failure across every section here is the same: measuring what is convenient rather than what matters, then never checking whether it predicted anything. The check is an afternoon of work once a year, and it is the step that separates a process that improves from one that merely persists.