[Athen] Fillable forms in Word

[Deborah Armstrong]

I've been experimenting with the latest Office 365 Word (desktop client) to make fillable forms using controls on the developer tab.
It's super easy to do, and as a screen reader user, fully accessible for me to create these forms.
But I've had a few disappointments.
If I save a form as a PDF, it's not fillable. I was hoping to find a way as a screen reader user to make a fillable PDF. We've got all these inaccessible forms on campus, and I want to be part of the solution - not just someone complaining about them!
I've also found it can be a little challenging to fill out a Word form without accidentally entering content. You have to carefully tab to the control and activate it with enter. If you press enter in the wrong place, you create an empty paragraph. So though accessible, it's a little confusing for a keyboard user.
Another problem with Word forms is that designers often include the fields within tables. Tab is used to both navigate between cells and to navigate to fields, so again, that adds a lot of confusion.
I also find that if you don't need a legal signature, and you just need a form filled out, it's a very accessible process to use the online Office app to create and/or fill out accessible forms. What I particularly like about Office 365 forms is that people who know nothing about accessibility seem to create accessible forms by default.
The online version of Word doesn't have a developer tab; you have to use Office 365 forms if you want to create a form that is fillable online and whose results can be reported back to you.
Google forms are also easy to create and fill using a screen reader. And ditto for SurveyMonkey.
With all these accessible options, I do wish people would stop using PDFS, but we use Adobe sign and people love it!
--Debee


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