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Re: Are Forms in MS Word Accessible?

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From: Karen McCall
Date: Dec 1, 2021 12:44PM

I use a similar process. I know Adobe says to add the form controls before you tag the document but that process has never worked well and about 6 years ago I started working with a tagged form template and then adding the form controls.

One caveat to adding the lines for people to print on is related to accessibility. As you type in those types of form controls you can never get the text to line up on the printing/writing lines. This can be frustrating for those who want perfection and think that they are doing something wrong because the text isn't on the lines and, a further important barrier is that someone visually proofreading the answers can't read the text if a printing guiding line runs through it.

Tip: I use Word Count in Word to figure out how much space I need for a long answer. This is assuming I'm creating the form template. I create the form template in Word, save it as a tagged PDF, open it in Acrobat and remediate any accessibility check errors, create the form controls and then add them to the Tags Tree.

BTW, in the Appearance tab in the form control properties dialog you can add an underline to a form control for short answer questions like your name or address or signature. These don't require being artifacted but give a guiding line for printing.

Cheers, Karen