To be accessible the PDF form must be created as a tagged document. The goal of the form design is to ensure that all the field elements are placed in the logical structure within the tag tree and have appropriate text descriptors using tool tips or captions. Adobe provides three tools that can be used to create accessible interactive PDF forms. All three methods create a tagged PDF document.
- Adobe Acrobat Professional
- Adobe Form Access
- Adobe Designer
Using Adobe Acrobat Professional
The workflow for creating forms in Adobe Acrobat requires designing and formatting the form in an authoring tool; converting the document into a tagged PDF document and then entering and naming the field elements in Acrobat.
- Using MS Word, layout, enter and format the information and the labels for the form fields
- Place each label on a new line.
- Save and convert document into a tagged PDF document
- Open document in Acrobat Professional
- Activate the Tags palette, and enable "Highlight Content" and "Tag Annotations" from the Options menu.
- Select the label for the form field in the tag tree. For example the text “First Name:". It will be highlighted in the document
- Select the appropriate form input field from the forms toolbar
- Use the mouse to draw this form field in line with the field label.
- Right click to open the properties dialog box. Properties are used define the input field
- Under the General tab, enter a unique field name in the "Name" edit box and field label in the "Tool Tip" edit box. Screen readers will read the information in the "Tool Tip"
- Under the Appearance tab select “underlined” for line style to visually represent the line
- The input object will automatically be placed into the correct location in the tags palette.
- Select Lock form from the forms toolbar.
