Accessible Forms - PDF
Adbode Designer and Form Access

Table of Contents

Forms - Overview

MS Word - Forms

PDF- Forms

Acrobat Professional

Forms Access

Designer

HTML Forms

Tutorials

Resources

Screen reader form accessibility

Creating forms using Word – Zianet

Creating a form using Word – Penn State

Web Usability– Accessible Forms

Acrobat – Creating PDF Forms

Adobe Designer or Acrobat Forms

Adobe PDF tutorial - forms

Using Form Access

Adobe PDF Forms Access is software tool designed to tag “untagged PDF forms” created in Adobe Acrobat. It automates and optimizes the tagging process. This tool cannot process a “tagged” document. If for some reason the form is not properly tagged, clear all the tags and save the form as an untagged document. This can be done by opening the Tags Tab in the navigation pane (View > Navigation Tabs > Tags), and selecting Clear Tags from the Options Menu.

To create a tagged form:

1. Open an “untagged” PDF form in Forms Access Tool. The tags for the form will be automatically created as the form is opened in the tool. The tags are shown one page at a time.
2. Make any necessary edits and changes in the Tags or Tag Tree.
3. Save the form by using File > Finish option. This option will complete the form processing and lock the changes.
   Caution: once the form is saved using Finish Option, it cannot be reopened in Adobe PDF Forms Access. To create a backup copy for future editing, Use File > Save As option prior to Finish Option.

Using Adobe Designer

Adobe Designer is a graphical form design tool and is often used for designing complex forms that vary in layout or content. All text, images, buttons, icons and form elements are treated as objects that can be dragged and dropped to position them on the page. The objects can be assigned properties including layout, size, border, font, paragraph, and for accessibility.

The form saves as a tagged PDF document. The labels for the field objects can be made be created any one of the following:

1. As a "Caption". Text objects consist of 2 parts, the caption or Label Field and the Edit Box. The Label Field is selected and edited to enter the text for the field name: This text is called the caption.

2. Open the Object pallete by Window> Object. In the Bindings tab, enter the “Name” for the object. This represents the unique name for the field and is limited to a single string.

3. Text label using the Accessibility palette. From the Accessibility pallete use only one option to either
• Enter text in “Tooltips”
• Enter label in “custom screen reader box”

Caution: If more then one label is specified for any form object, only one will be spoken. The default order of preference is Custom Text, Tooltip, Caption, and Name. This default order can be overridden by using Screen Reader Precedence option in the Accessiility pallete.

On saving a tagged PDF file is generated.