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Re: Accessible Word Docs - Need Help

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From: Joseph Sherman
Date: Jun 9, 2016 12:27PM

You should redo the Form completely using Form Fields so users can fill the form on the computer. This is critical for visually impaired users, but also makes life much easier for everyone who can fill the form online even if they have to print it for some reason. What you are referring to are not really forms per se. In this day requiring users to print and fill a "form" by hand is outdated and something I'm working on getting rid of at my school where possible.



The easiest way to do this is generally to create the form in html on a web page. This also can allow for direct submission if appropriate. If for some reason that is not possible, you can with some effort create an accessible PDF form.



The information below is what I use to create PDF Forms:


"Accessible PDF forms require multiple steps. In addition to following general PDF accessibility principles, the following four steps are required to ensure the accessibility of a PDF form:

1. Add the correct form fields to the PDF. This can be accomplished by creating a PDF form from scratch within Acrobat or by adding form fields to an existing PDF.
2. Include an accessible label that describes the purpose of the form control to a screen reader. This is provided through the Tooltip.
3. Add tags to the form fields.
4. Check, and if necessary repair, the tab order.

Good guides for content creators include:

Accessible Forms in Acrobat XI from WebAIM<http://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/forms>; , Creating Accessible PDF Forms Using Adobe Acrobat Pro<http://www.washington.edu/accessibility/documents/pdf-forms/>;, and Creating accessible PDF forms with Acrobat Pro DC<https://acrobatusers.com/tutorials/creating-accessible-pdf-forms-with-acrobat-pro-dc>


Here's an earlier discussion from this listserv about PDF forms:


"Be aware that in order for the form controls to be accessible, once you've built the accessibility into the form controls/fields themselves, you THEN Tag the document. You don't add form controls/fields to an already tagged PDF. If you are using a Word document as a template, this is the ONLY time you use Print to PDF to create an untagged PDF. You open the untagged PDF in acrobat Pro and begin adding the form controls. (Unless the document is a scanned document, in which case you perform the text recognition first.)



Here is the hierarchy of tasks that Adobe established years ago and I advocate that clients use:



1. Is the PDF a scanned document? If yes, perform Text Recognition.



2. Is the PDF document a fillable form? If yes, then add the "accessible" form controls/fields.



3. Does the PDF document have links? If yes, then use the Create Links from URL's tools and the Links tool to add them.



4. Does the PDF document have multimedia? If yes, then add the multimedia. I would add that the multimedia itself must be accessible and.



Only THEN do you add Tags to the document and then go through the remediation and/or Quality Assurance process. So the list of basics for the document are the same, but since you are adding another element, the form controls/fields also have to be accessible.



Note you CAN add accessible form fields to many already tagged documents. Admittedly it's more work because you have to had the Form OBJR for each field manually via (tags > find > unmarked annotations) but IMO it can be done. In fact, if you check the "tag annotations" item on the tags options menu the form OBJ will be added to the currently selected tag in the tree automatically when you insert the form field. So you would then need to create the form tags and then select them before creating each form field and then you would have tagged accessible form fields after you supply tooltips."

"





Joseph