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Re: Accessible PDF Forms - field labels

for

From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Jul 8, 2013 10:09PM

Olaf, thanks for your excellent comments.

There's a lot of information about the technical aspects of creating
accessible forms, but little about the nuances, exceptions, best practices,
and overall design of forms. Olaf's comments fill in that critical gap.

And of course, there's the accessibility of the text portions of forms
that's often overlooked in the material I've reviewed.

Ted Padova (a well-known Acrobat programmer) has a free guide to PDF forms.
The chapter on accessible forms (Chapter 21) is short and touches only the
basics), but the rest of the book is excellent. Download it here:
http://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/making-forms-accessible (250+ page PDF).

It would be wonderful if WebAIM could provide a best practices reference
guide, something beyond talking about the field name and the tool tip
accessible name. Olaf's comment about using a list rather than radio buttons
is an excellent example. Where to put instructions is another issue to
tackle.

—Bevi Chagnon
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www.PubCom.com — Trainers, Consultants, Designers, Developers.
Print, Web, Acrobat, XML, eBooks, and U.S. Federal Section 508
Accessibility.
New Sec. 508 Workshop & EPUBs Tour in 2013 — www.Workshop.Pubcom.com


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Olaf Drümmer
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 12:58 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Accessible PDF Forms - field labels

Hi Bevi,

regarding field labels I tend to recommend the following:

- for each form field and group of form fields there must be a clear visible
label
- I prefer them to be before the fillable field(s), i.e. to the left of a
field (in a left to right writing system, for Arabic and Hebrew it might
have to be to the right), or above the field(s)

- in some cases fields need to be explained; it is common practice -
especially in paper based forms - to put such information below the field
to be filled, or on a separate page or even a separate document; for my
taste, any such explanation should be positioned before the field(s) to be
filled, unless it is so long that it would destroy the visual structure of
the form; in that case it should be provided on a separate page/in an
appendix, ideally with forward and backward clickable links, to make jumping
around between field and explanation easier (for everyone, not just people
with disabilities)

- in addition there should be an internal, human readable name of the field,
usually referred to as tool tip or QuickInfo in form creation user
interfaces
- the internal name should be as short as possible and as long as necessary;
it should focus on identifying the field at hand, and - at least for my
taste - should usually not begin to explain the field; if a user encounters
the internal name first and is not sure how to fill the field, the user
should consult the content around the field.

- it will always be important that the form is organised in a consistent
fashion (I will never forget the green forms US immigration let me fill out
when entering the USA via the Visa Waiver program in pre-ESTA times - on the
front it followed one presentation structure, on the back a different
presentation structure; I filled at least a third of those forms out
incorrectly on the fifty or so trans-atlantic trips I did in the last
decade, putting information in the wrong fields, and finding out at the
bottom of the page that I was running out of fillable areas, and had skipped
the first fillable area at the top...

- in general I am not a friend of information that is visible only some of
the time; I have seen forms where several paragraphs of explanatory text pop
up in a tool tip or in a separate dialog box. This more often than not
creates rather than solves problems. If some information is important to at
least some users, put it on the pages of the document, and make it easy to
recognise it / locate it / find it / navigate to it (and back).


Well organised agencies and companies would have guidelines and templates
for this… (and ideally not just for the corporate design aspects of forms).


This is just my 2 cents,

Olaf