This article outlines accommodation available for candidates taking their Karat assessments. This content is intended for all audiences.

Karat’s is committed to offer an inclusive platform that allows all candidates to best showcase their skills. Every candidate who books their own interview via the Karat scheduling link is asked if they require any accommodation. If they respond, "Yes", a Customer Experience Associate works with the candidate to schedule an Accommodation Interview, ensuring their unique needs are met.

ADA standards

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Standards for Accessible Design outline requirements for making public spaces and digital content accessible to people with disabilities. These standards aim to prevent discrimination and ensure equal access to services and facilities.

Karat complies with ADA standards through the following actions:

Extending interview lengths based on candidate needs (from 60 to 90 or 120 minutes).
Supporting screen readers.
Allowing interpreter usage.
Providing accommodations within Karat Studio, an IDE designed with accessibility in mind, including:
- A simple, user-friendly interface.
- High-contrast support and large fonts.
- Text chat functionality.
- Instructions presented in text.
Enabling the use of personal development environments to complete coding questions.
Supporting tools such as mouth pens for typing.

Accommodation Requests

Candidates can directly communicate their accommodation requests when scheduling their interviews. Karat does not ask candidates to disclose their condition but encourages them to share how their experience can be made fair.

Karat follows this process for accommodation requests:

The candidate receives the invitation link to Karat interview.
While scheduling, the candidate selects "Yes" on the Accessibility window to indicate a need for accommodations.

The candidate specifies their accommodation request:

Karat notifies the Interview Engineer (IVE) team, and notes are added to the candidate’s upcoming interview to ensure accommodations are provided.

If an Interview Engineer is notified of an accommodation request during a live interview, they will do their best to address it on the spot. In some cases, the interview may need to be rescheduled to meet the candidate’s needs. Recruiters can also email Karat's 24/7 support team at any time to inform them of candidate accommodation requirements.

Support Team

Every candidate who submits an accommodation request confirms their needs with Karat's 24/7 support team. The team schedules the candidate with the Interview Engineer best suited to meet their needs.

Examples of Accommodations

Here are examples of accommodations Karat has provided, along with actions taken to ensure a fair interview experience.

Candidates Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing:

Instructions are presented through text.
Communication through the call environment's built-in chat function, or inside of Karat Studio using text.
Interviews can be extended by up to 30 minutes.

Candidates Who Are Blind:

Use of a screen reader to interact with Karat Studio.
Option to use their own development environment for coding questions.
Interviews can be extended by up to 30 minutes.

Candidates Who Are Quadriplegic:

Use of tools like mouth pens for typing.
Option to use their own development environment.
Interviews can be extended by up to 30 minutes.

Candidates With Learning Disabilities:

Interviews can be extended by up to 30 minutes.

Candidates With Dyslexia:

Option to use their own development environment.
Interviews can be extended by up to 30 minutes.

Candidates With Temporary Injuries:

Interviews can be extended by up to 30 minutes.

Interview Engineer Training

All of our Interview Engineers are equipped to support candidates with special accommodations. Guidance for handling interviews with accommodations is outlined in our Interview Engineer Onboarding handbook. Below is a portion of the training guide:

As a Karat Interview Engineer, you may conduct interviews that require specific accommodations. For example, a candidate who is deaf or hard of hearing may need all instructions to be presented through text. A candidate who is blind may use a screen reader to hear the sample input and interact with Karat Studio. A candidate who is quadriplegic may use a mouth pen to type. A candidate with a learning disability may require 50% more time during the interview. A candidate with dyslexia may need more time to understand the question prompt.

If an interview requires any kind of adjustment, information will be provided by the CX Team in the "Internal Notes" field. You will also be notified in advance over Slack.

In most cases, the adjustment centers around providing a level playing field for communication. The extra time you or the candidate spends on the logistics of communication should not take away from the time they'd otherwise have to discuss algorithms, write code, and answer knowledge questions.

Accommodation Options Table

Karat can offer the candidate more than one option if appropriate (there is not limit to the number of options Karat can offer each candidate). If more than one Accommodation Option exists, our Support Team will email the candidate to ask for their preferred accommodations.

Below are some cases along with the accommodation Karat can offer the candidate.

Key

🕢 = The interview can be extended up to a maximum of 30 minutes. The 30 minutes can be split over the knowledge questions and the coding questions as the IVE sees fit.
🖥 = May use a screen reader to hear the sample input and interact with Karat Studio. This will mean setting them up to use a custom tool via Google Meet.
㏄ = May need closed captions. This will mean setting them up to use a custom tool via Google Meet.
⌨️ = May need all instructions to be presented through text.
🛠 = May need to use a custom tool. This will mean setting them up to use a custom tool via Google Meet.

Medical Condition	Accommodation Option 1	Accommodation Option 2	Accommodation Option 3
Autism	🕢
Autoimmune conditions (ex. lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS)	🕢
Blindness or poor vision	🖥	🕢
Cerebral palsy	🕢
Deaf or hard of hearing	cc	⌨️	🕢
Depression or anxiety	🕢
Epilepsy	🕢
Intellectual disability	🕢
Missing limbs or partially missing limbs	🛠	🕢
Mobility impairments	🛠	🕢
Nervous system conditions (migraine headaches, MS, Parkinson’s disease)	🛠	🕢
Psychiatric conditions (bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, PTSD, schizophrenia)	🕢

Other Common Requests	Accommodation Option 1	Accommodation Option 2	Accommodation Option 3
Awarded extra time for exams in University, College, School	🕢
Request extra time with little to no explanation why it is needed	🕢
Speech impediment	🕢
Headaches caused by celiac disease	🕢
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)	🕢

Important: Candidate with color blindness may request the colors in Karat studio to be turned off. At this time, colors can not be turned off in Karat Studio; only the theme can be changed. Our engineering team is aware of this limitation and will hopefully be able to accommodate this in the future.

For any further questions regarding accommodation options, the recruiter or candidate is welcomed to email support@karat.io

Candidate Feedback for previous accommodation requests

This sections presents previous candidate's experiences with accommodation requests when having their Karat assessment:

“That's awesome Karat is looking into implementing accommodations for interviews as I know it can be difficult, especially with how focused and intentional Karat is in making a fair interview process for everyone. I greatly appreciate the offer for an accommodation for this upcoming interview.”

“This was by far the least stressful and anxiety-inducing interview I've had. It wasn't that the questions were easy – just the atmosphere felt like I was just sitting and coding up a problem, and I can ask my pair programmer/friend a question. [...] I have anxiety, and a lot of interviews leave me with my hands shaking and me beating myself up, but the friendly atmosphere made it a lot easier for me to actually work on the problems and feel happy about my work.”

“It was quite accessible for screen readers. Thank you.”

“I truly enjoyed my interview experience with my interviewer [...]. It was amazing and I had a lot of fun. I found the coding environment to be pretty good and I loved the variety of custom themes we could choose from.”

“Interviewer was terrific, sensitive to my learning disability, and truly helped me bring out my best while remaining professional. Bravo!”

FAQs

For more information, visit the Accessibility and Accommodation Requests section on Karat's general FAQs page.