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

[Hausler,Jesse]

Thanks Sean,

I've gone back to LCD and seem to now have the tab order to something that I can live with. It's not what I specified in LCD, but it can at least be viewed as "logical".

I've gone back to Acrobat to run the accessibility check.  It throws an error for every form field (Not contained in structure tree), but I do see that there is a new type of OBJR in the Tags.  I typically minimize (and teach others to minimize) results of the built-in accessibility full check, in exchange for more detailed human-based analysis of the PDF. 

Is this just another example of where the Accessibility check in Acrobat is flawed? Or is there something else up with this form?

Thanks again,
Jesse 

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On Behalf Of Sean J Keegan
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 12:41 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Adobe Acrobat - What happened to the "Fields" tab?

 > 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