Adobe 22001438 Accessibility Guide - Page 47

ADOBE ACROBAT 7.0 40 Section 8: Making Adobe PDF forms accessible Characteristics of accessible Adobe PDF forms To be considered accessible, an Adobe PDF form must have the following five characteristics: • Fillable form fields, so that users can complete the form on a computer • Descriptions for the form fields, so that screen readers can read the fields to users • A preset tab order, so that users can navigate logically from form field to form field • A complete set of tags, so that screen readers can read the entire document to the user • Other standard accessibility features as needed for navigating and reading the contents of the rest of the document (for example, bookmarks, accessible links, and so on) This section describes the workflow for achieving the first four characteristics for PDF forms. See Sections 10 through 13 for instructions on optimizing the rest of the PDF document for accessibility. Workflows for creating forms The workflows for creating accessible Adobe PDF forms vary based on what Acrobat tools you are using and where you're starting from-a blank page, an untagged PDF form, or a tagged PDF form. Which Adobe tools are you using? Adobe provides the following three applications for producing accessible Adobe PDF forms: • Acrobat 7.0 Professional. Use this application to open untagged or tagged PDF forms (except PDF forms that are created from LiveCycle Designer) in order to add fillable form fields, such as text boxes, check boxes, and buttons. Then use the application's other tools to make the form accessible by adding descriptions to form fields, tagging untagged forms, setting the set tab order, manipulating tags, and performing the other PDF accessibility tasks that are described in this guide. • Adobe PDF Forms Access. Use this tool to open and tag untagged PDF forms that you created by using Acrobat Professional, and to manipulate the tags of these forms. You can then open the tagged PDF document in Acrobat Professional and complete the rest of the accessibility tasks that are described in this guide. • LiveCycle Designer. Use this product to design and build new forms or to import untagged PDF forms and make their form fields fillable and accessible. You can deploy forms in tagged PDF, XML, and other formats from LiveCycle Designer. Note: If you often process complex, untagged PDF forms, consider purchasing Adobe PDF Forms Access. Its tagging feature is optimized for interpreting forms content, and its tags editor is much easier to use than the tags editor in Acrobat Professional for correcting tagging problems in forms. Deciding between LiveCycle Designer and Acrobat Professional Once you create or edit an Acrobat form in LiveCycle Designer, it becomes a LiveCycle Designer file-it is no longer a PDF document that you can open, edit, or manipulate in Acrobat Professional. Both Acrobat and Adobe Reader can open and read PDF forms that you create from LiveCycle Designer. These PDF forms, however, do not include permissions to modify the file, so you cannot perform any other accessibility tasks that are described in this guide on PDF forms that you generate from LiveCycle Designer. You should therefore use LiveCycle Designer only for PDF documents that are intended to contain only form-based information. Do not use it to add form fields to a document that combines pages of narrative with an occasional page that has form fields. In this case, you should use Acrobat Professional to add the form fields, and then use Acrobat Professional to complete the accessibility tasks that are described in this guide for the rest of the document's content.