WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: PDF forms: all form field-related information read out twice

for

From: Nasrin Saef
Date: Jun 30, 2014 8:18AM

Thanks for all of your replies! I'd like to address some of your points:

Olaf:
> Also please keep in mind that when thinking of assistive technology not
to always only think of screen readers. Blind and low vision users are a
relatively small
> percentage of people with disabilities (in other words: there are lots of
people with different needs).

This is exactly the reason I posted this question. I am aware of the fact
accessibility means more than screen reader compatibility - but I have to
admit that when it comes to topics such as forms, I'm not sure what else to
check. I know to take care about the tagging, the tab order, proper
contrasts etc. But I'm wondering what use cases I miss.

Karen:
> For people with learning, cognitive or visual disabilities, having that
redundant information helps in understanding where they are in the form and
what to enter
> into the field. If they are using screen reading or Text-to-Speech
software, it can also confirm the Tab Order of the form controls.

Said like this, it actually makes a lot of sense. Thanks!


2014-06-24 14:54 GMT+02:00 Duff Johnson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >:

> > Agreed, we had a vendor try to artifact this text which made me
> > uncomfortable as that seems like a PDF/UA violation
>
> Yes - this is a *clear* PDF/UA violation!
>
> Field labels appearing on the page (i.e., not in the control's tool-tip)
> are "real content", period, end of discussion. They *shall* be tagged.
>
> One of the many many reasons we need PDF/UA is to make such matters very
> clear.
>
> Unfortunately, at the present time WCAG 2.0's published PDF Techniques
> pertaining to PDF forms ignore the subject of form-field labels except in
> the context of tool-tips. This should be improved. For some reason (and
> differing from the way regular PDF forms are addressed) the discussion
> regarding LiveCycle (XFA) forms does include the "visual" label. However,
> XFA forms are a small percentage of PDF forms overall.
>
> A not-unrelated observation… while the normative text of WCAG 2.0 itself
> is careful on this point, the PDF Techniques (and maybe others as well)
> seem to use "screen reader" as a substitute for "assistive technology" in
> many cases. As many have observed, this is misleading (since not all AT are
> screen readers); the text should be changed accordingly.
>
> > In testing I found that ZoomText's text-to-speech tools did not
> > read the artifact text and this would be an issue as you mention.
>
> Precisely so.
>
> Duff.
> > > >