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Re: Underlines in Forms

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From: Karen McCall
Date: Mar 2, 2023 4:20AM

I don't recommend adding shapes or lines in a form template.

First, you end up with the problem you have with JAWS or TTS tools reading them.

Second, there are times when you try to reorder things on a page and all of the underlines end up in one Tag which forces you to remediate them as artifacts or focus will jump all over the page as someone goes through the form.

Third, you have to cover the shapes that were added for check boxes or radio buttons which limits the size of form controls.

Fourth, the shapes used for check boxes or radio buttons often show up as "character code errors" in an accessibility check because they are not Unicode characters.

I never use the auto detect form controls as it tends to create more work than it helps.

In the Appearance tab in the form control properties, you can add an underline to the form control itself which is my approach. That takes the "underline" out of the body of the document and associates it with the form control itself.

I create, and teach how to create, a clean form template that then gives you the flexibility to ensure that form controls are an appropriate size and can be placed near the text/question.

That would be my fifth reason for not adding them in the form template...you are stuck having them in the position of the template which might be too far away from the text for someone using screen magnification.

The sixth reason is that sometimes people choose a square to indicate what should be a radio button, or, in at least two forms I've worked on, they've used blue dots to indicate a radio button. Not sure what the rationale is, but there you go.

Oh, and the seventh reason not to add them in a form template is that even people who are mouse dependent will try to click on them and get frustrated.

JAWS will only read three instances of "underline" even if there are more than three instances. We are used to that. However, for forms, just create clean forms and then add the form controls using the Appearance tab sparingly.

Do not adjust colours of form controls or make them "pretty". When you do anything in terms of changing the appearance of a form control, you over ride the end-user's choices they made in the Preferences dialog. I only use the Appearance tab to create the black underline effect! That is minimal intrusion on the user preferences.

Cheers, Karen