[Athen] Adobe Acrobat - What happened to the "Fields" tab?

[Sean J Keegan]

 > I’m making an accessible PDF form using Acrobat
 > Pro 9.2, and it appears that both the Forms toolbar
 > and the Fields tab are gone.

These will not be available if you created the form in LiveCycle 
Designer.  Forms created in LCD are not editable in Adobe Acrobat Pro.

 > But then none of the form fields were in the
 > document structure.  I added them using the
 > TouchUp Reading order tool.

What "panel" were you looking at?  I just created a LCD-based form and 
saved it as a static PDF.  If you then open the "Tags Panel", you will 
see that there are form field tags in the document structure.  LCD-based 
forms are a different "beast" than Adobe Acrobat forms, so the actual 
tag may look a bit different.

 > The issue I’m facing now is that my tab order is
 > inconsistent. I have triple checked the order of
 > the form fields in the Tags, and I have specified
 > in the “Page Properties” that it use the “Document
 > Structure” for tab order.

While that would be true for Adobe Acrobat based forms, this does not 
hold true for LCD based forms.  Tab order (which is incorrectly labeled 
IMO) is set in LCD.

(Note - I am using LCD 8.2)

- In LCD, go to "Window" and then "Tab Order".  This will open a panel 
on the left side of the interface.

- The default "tab order" is really the logical reading order of the 
document - not just the tab order.

- In terms of accessibility, I would suggest checking to ensure the 
information "flows" correctly.  The first form field element in LCD 
should not be Tab Order=1 IF there is text content that precedes that 
form field.

My only suggestion would be to not edit the PDF form in Adobe Acrobat. 
If you used LCD to create the form, then use LCD to do all the editing. 
  Adding the requisite accessibility information is MUCH easier in LCD 
for the form field elements and does not require any utilization of 
Acrobat Pro.

Take care,
Sean
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