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Re: Are Forms in MS Word Accessible?

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From: Steve Green
Date: Dec 1, 2021 4:41AM

Hi Jim,

I have done a load of research into this and the answer is categoric - Word forms are hopelessly inaccessible to a variety of user groups even if you do absolutely everything possible. As you have found, converting to PDF just makes things worse and you have to add all the form controls again in Acrobat.

The best solution is to author the form in InDesign and export as PDF. If you do everything right, my understanding is that you shouldn't need to fix anything in Acrobat.

BTW, Ted Page of Accessible Digital Documents knows more about the topic than anyone I know. It's all he's done for the last 15 years, so you can trust what he says. We used to subcontract our document remediation to him, but he's always booked solid with training courses so we now do it all in-house again.

I'd be happy to collaborate if there are any parts of this you don't fancy doing yourself.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd