Accessible PDF forms
An important part of digital accessibility
are accessible PDF forms.
In this video we explain what accessible PDF forms are
how to plan them, create them in Microsoft Word
and finalize them in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Finally, we will show you how to check their
accessibility and how to adjust it if necessary.
Step 1: What are accessible PDF forms?
As an electronic document, a PDF form can be both read and filled out by a machine
thus enabling the standardized recording of the entries.
Accessible forms also contain structural information,
which enable visually impaired people
to read and fill out the forms
independently with a screen reader.
This includes tags and bookmarks in particular
as well as alternate texts or tooltips for the individual form fields.
A note to begin with:
Accessible PDF forms should only be used
if a form is to be filled out on the computer,
but printed and sent by post afterwards,
for example because a signature is necessary.
If no printout is required,
you should give preference to web-based forms,
as these are less prone to errors and more machine-readable.
Additionally, this allows the data
to be electronically processed immediately.
Step 2: Plan the form
If you are planning a form that will be used
across faculties at the University of Potsdam,
create its structure in Microsoft Word
and contact the Center for Information Technology
and Media Management for everything else.
We'll show you now, how to create such a structure in Word.
However, if it is a form,
that should only be used in your faculty or department,
for example for an upcoming conference,
we will also show you how to create the actual form yourself.
Start by planning the content and structure of the form:
Which data should be recorded and in what form?
Keep to the principle:
As much as necessary and as little as possible.
Also make sure,
that your queries are compliant with data protection according to GDPR.
For example, should your form contain fields,
in which the free input of content is possible?
Or should the data be entered in a specific format?
Should your form contain radio buttons,
so fields where people filling in the form
have to choose one of the options listed?
Or should there be list boxes
where any number of items
can be selected from a given list?
Which of your form fields are optional
and which are mandatory?
And should your form be monolingual or multilingual?
Step 3: Create a form in Microsoft Word
Once you have planned the content of your form, you can now create its structure.
This is possible in different programs,
e.g. Microsoft Excel, Open Office or Adobe InDesign.
In this tutorial we will explain it for Microsoft Word.
Here you create a normal text document,
which is only then converted into a form in Adobe Acrobat.
We have already created a document here.
Let's take a closer look at that now.
The most important thing are these lines.
They serve as placeholders for the form fields later on,
which will be used to enter text.
You create these lines via the menu item "Insert"> Shapes.
Here you select a line and place it
directly above the corresponding text.
The line will later be automatically recognized
as a form field for text in Adobe Acrobat.
It is best to copy the first line over and over.
So later all lines have the same length.
Another note:
Please do not use tables as placeholders.
Adobe Acrobat can convert these into form fields without any problems,
screen readers, however, always have problems with tables.
As you can see, no lines are set above
"matriculation number", or the master types.
This is because we want to use special form fields here,
three radio buttons in this case.
These will be created later in Acrobat.
This is why here in Word, we have left some space
for the boxes next to the terms.
If you just create the structure of
the form and then send it to the ZIM,
it makes sense to use an existing form
and take screenshots of relevant elements
to insert them here as placeholders.
This makes it easier for colleagues at the ZIM to correctly complete the form.
I'll show that using the matriculation number.
To do this, I open an existing form.
To screenshot the matriculation number area,
press the keyboard shortcut Windows logo key + Shift + S.
You can now insert the screenshot under the matriculation number.
If you create your accessible PDF form completely independently,
you can of course do it without these screenshots.
A few more words about the design:
As always with the creation of accessible documents,
when creating a form, you should make sure to
use templates and stick to the principles of accessible design.
All texts are designed uniformly.
The title of the document is correctly marked as Heading 1.
The next heading below as Heading 2,
the following as Heading 3 etc.
All other text elements are shown as normal paragraph text.
The fonts are sans serif and unnecessary decorative elements have been omitted.
The contrast between text and background is as high as possible.
All mandatory fields are marked as such.
Now you should define the language of your texts.
This is important so that a screen reader knows
The intonation with which the text should be read out.
Currently the standard setting for the entire text is "German",
however, our form also contains English texts.
These would quickly become incomprehensible with a German intonation.
Therefore select the respective English text
and choose the correct language below.
Do the same with all paragraphs.
If your document contains graphs or images, they will need Alternate Text.
To add this, right-click on the image
and select "Edit Alt Text".
Here you enter a concise description that describes
the content of the graph clearly to visually impaired people.
If the illustration is a mere decorative element,
you mark it as such.
The screen reader will then skip it.
Now check again whether your document contains all the elements you want,
because a subsequent addition is very cumbersome and time-consuming.
If you are satisfied with the check, save your document as a PDF.
Another note:
If your form includes a long explanatory text, e.g. terms and conditions,
this should not be part of the PDF form,
but rather be provided as a separate document.
Step 4: Finalize the form in Adobe Acrobat Pro
Now open your PDF in Adobe Acrobat.
First of all, a basic note on the procedure:
Save your PDF under a new name after each step, as some
of the adjustments that have to be made cannot be undone.
Otherwise, if you make a mistake, you'll
have to start over from the beginning.
First, let's convert our document into a form.
To do this, go to "Tools" and select "Prepare Form".
Check under "Change" whether all options are ticked and confirm with OK.
Now you can press "Start". This looks pretty good:
Acrobat has converted all of the lines into form fields.
Let's take a closer look at the form fields:
On the right you can see all fields of your form that have been detected.
Each field was automatically assigned the title of the text field in front of it.
By right clicking on the form field and selecting "Properties"
this text can be customized.
It is important that the "Tooltip" field is also filled in,
because this text will be used as description by the screen reader.
Here you also determine whether this field is required to be filled out.
It has now changed to red after closing the "Properties" dialogue.
Continue like this with all form fields.
This field was correctly recognized as a signature field.
Those using a digital signature can insert it here.
Everyone else signs the printout.
This field is not supposed to be a form field.
It was created by mistake
because a line was set as a visual separator.
We simply select the field and delete it.
For the field "Date of birth" you can also
specify that the entry has to be made a certain way:
To do this, open the "Properties" again.
Use the “Format” tab to select “Date” as format category
and define the details of formatting.
Remember: we left some blank spaces in Word
in order to insert radio buttons here in Acrobat.
We will do that now.
At this point, people filling out this form should choose
one of three options.
You can see various types of forms above.
With this circle we create radio buttons.
Drag the field to the desired location.
Enter the name of the field in "Radio Button Choice",
and a title including all three options
under "Group Name"
If it is a required field, you can also specify this here.
You create the other two fields
by selecting "Add Another Button".
The “Group Name” is now automatically correct.
Should you create several radio button groups in your form,
make sure that your radio button is assigned to the correct group.
If your three circles are not the same size, you can adjust this.
To do this, select all three fields with the Shift key pressed
and in the top right under “Match Size” select “Match width and height”.
Then you can align all three circles with the "Align" menu.
Alternatively, you can also select the fields
and position them manually with the keyboard controls.
We are still missing two form fields.
We want to copy these from an existing form.
Before you do this: Make sure that the form has been created correctly.
This will prevent mistakes from being copied.
Open the desired form
and choose "Prepare Form" from the "Tools" menu.
In our case, the form field for entering the matriculation number should be copied.
To do this, select the desired field with the mouse and copy it.
Then go back to your form and paste the field.
By selecting Properties, you can
double-check Name and Tooltip
and classify the field as “required” if desired.
This method is particularly useful if
your form field is a complex one to create.
In this case, we want to insert the form field "Degree currently pursued".
This is a drop-down field with a lot of options.
So copy it again and paste it into our form.
Then position it correctly and correct the Properties if necessary.
Through the tab "Options" you can also add or remove options
to your drop-down field, or change the text.
Although the form fields now all appear to be correctly positioned,
they might not be in the right order yet
when using the keyboard with the tab key.
This is based on the field sequence that you can see in the overview on the right.
Therefore, it is best to check it again.
A lot got mixed up there.
We can easily correct this,
by dragging the fields to the correct position with the mouse button pressed.
You can test the order of your fields again by going
through them once with the help of the tab key.
That looks good.
Now check that all elements you want your form to contain
are present before you continue.
And it's best to save your form under a new name.
For a screen reader to reliably allow reading,
navigating and filling out the form
Make sure your form has tags.
These define, for example, whether a text is a heading
or a standard text or identify a form field as such.
You can check this in the toolbar on the left by selecting the "Tags" tab.
If you have created your PDF in Word with templates and
correctly exported it as PDF, the correct tags for images,
headings and paragraphs should be available.
If there are no tags, you can use the "Accessibility" tool
to "Autotag" the document and adjust it manually if necessary.
Find out how this works in the tutorial
"Adapting existing PDFs to accessibility standards".
The form fields must also be tagged as such:
To do this, open the "Reading Order" tool
in the "Accessibility" tool area on the right.
Now select your first form field with the mouse
and mark it as a "Form Field".
Repeat this with all the fields.
We can also see that the German and English texts
are incorrectly summarized in a paragraph tag.
This is a mistake, as the screen reader reads
both languages ​​with the same intonation.
You can solve this problem with the help of the "Reading Order Tool".
Here you select the English part with the mouse
and mark it as a separate paragraph.
Then right-click on the tag to access its "Properties"
and assign it a language. Do the same for all text tags.
Next we need to check the reading order:
To do this, we open the "Reading Sequence" tab on the left.
In the “Reading Order” tool, you also switch
from “Structure types” to “Page content order”.
Each element now has a number.
This shows the order in which the elements are read out by the screen reader.
In our case there is still quite a mess.
We fix this by manually dragging the elements
to the correct position on the left in the "Reading Sequence" tab.
First the logo and the title should be read out,
then the sender and the first form field.
Work your way through the entire document like this.
Ideally you will now check, whether your document also has bookmarks.
To do this, select the menu item "Bookmarks" on the left.
These show the document structure as it is set for the visually impaired.
Bookmarks allow users to navigate through a document,
without having to flip from page to page.
In our case there are no bookmarks yet.
However, after having clearly structured our document with the help of tags,
we can select the command "New Bookmarks from Structure".
Here we see how the document is structured and can choose
which elements should be part of the table of contents.
It makes sense to only use the headings here
by selecting them while pressing the shift key and confirming.
Step 5: Check and adapt accessibility
Now we can carry out the accessibility check of our form.
To do this, select on the right in the tool "Accessibility"
the "Accessibility Check" option.
Make sure to select the category “Forms, Tables and Lists”
and start checking.
A couple of errors are being displayed.
The "Logical Reading Order" is listed first.
But we have just carefully corrected that,
so that we can confirm with a right click.
Next, we are told that our form does not yet have a title.
For this title to also be read out by the screen reader
- instead of the file name - open the "Properties" under "File".
Under “Initial View”, select “Document Title” under “Show”.
Then select "Fix" by right-clicking on the error message.
The next error message concerns the color contrast:
Since we only worked with black letters on white,
the contrast is as high as possible and should not cause reading difficulties.
With a right click we can also select "Pass".
The last error message concerns three missing Alternate Texts:
This refers to the logo and these two visual separator lines.
The logo needs an Alternate Text.
Since the two lines do not convey any content,
we should mark them as decoration.
Now it's almost done.
As a last step the PDF/UA identifier has to be set.
Because for a PDF to be considered technically accessible,
the meta information must be available,
which marks the document as PDF/UA compatible.
Open “Print Production” on the right and select the “Preflight” option.
Select the wrench in the preflight window.
Under "Document info and Metadata"
you will see the menu item "Set PDF/UA entry".
Select this and click on "Fix" at the bottom right.
You can now save the final PDF.
Checklist
A summary of the most important steps:
First, plan the content and structure of your form.
Then create the structure in Microsoft Word and save it as a PDF.
Now convert your document into a form in Adobe Acrobat
and add further form fields if necessary.
Then assign titles and tooltips to your form fields and specify
whether they are optional or mandatory fields.
Then tag your form fields and correct the reading order.
Now check the accessibility and fix the error messages.
Finally, set the PDF/UA identifier.
If you do run into technical difficulties, you are welcome to
contact the “Center for Information Technology and Media Management”.