[Athen] Fillable forms in Word

[Karen McCall]

I forgot to say that the static PDF forms are the ones you create in Acrobat. They are your regular every day PDF forms that can be made accessible.

You can make static PDF forms in a tool like form designer, but you cannot check the accessibility of those forms in Acrobat, because you’ve used an XFA form designer, to create the static/regular every day PDF forms.

 Cheers, Karen.

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________________________________
From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> on behalf of Karen McCall <K4mccall at outlook.com>
Sent: Friday, June 2, 2023 1:34:21 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Fillable forms in Word


This is a common set of questions/issues.



While you can add content controls, legacy form controls and/or ActiveX form controls in Word, they are not accessible to fill out.



Content controls were never designed to be accessible. They were introduced in Office 2007 and, as their name indicates, are there to add content when creating templates. There are NO radio buttons in the set of content controls. If you want to explore content controls, take a look at the gallery of Tables of Content you can add to a document. The gallery creates a TOC using content controls.

Always use the “Create Table of Contents” or “Custom Table of Contents” to create a TOC! Alt + S, T, C. Visually, they look like a text box with a tab in the upper left.



Content controls have several issues:



  1.  They are still keyboard traps despite some minor improvements.
  2.  We are never notified when entering or exiting a content control.
  3.  Adaptive technology does not read the Tooltips.
  4.  They cannot be resized.
  5.  Any improvements to content controls are NOT backward compatible!



When either the legacy form controls or the ActiveX form controls are added to a Word document, in order for them to gain focus to be filled out, the rest of the document or significant sections of it MUST be protected. This means that someone using TTS or screen readers will not have access to any instructions that might be available to those who can see the form. I’ve had to remediate these types of forms over the past two or three years and even with 15-20 form controls on a page, Word crashes or the adaptive technology crashes or they both crash at the same time.



Explaining why you can’t convert a form in Word that has form controls to a tagged PDF form takes a bit more explanation.



When form controls are created in a Word document, they can’t be resized and their attributes are minimal.  They are designed, by default, to live in Word.



IF they could be converted to tagged PDF, they would not be able to be resized automatically to fit content. Form controls that expand in PDFs are XFA forms, not PDF forms.



When a form control is added in a PDF form template, they can be resized to some extent/allowing for spacing and there are attributes like setting the font to auto size among other attributes.



Form controls that expand as content is added in a form that is viewed in a PDF reader are called XFA forms (Extensible form Architecture). You need a tool like the old LiveCycle Designer or the reinvention of LiveCycle Designer, Form Designer, to create XFA forms where the form controls expand as text is added to them in the PDF reader.



BUT…



Currently there is no standard for XFA forms or are known as “dynamic PDF” forms and no accessibility standards. They can’t be validated by any of the existing PDF accessibility checkers. Someone made a weak attempt to create an accessibility checker add-on for Form Designer but without a standard to go by, it was useless.



The PDF readers are only used to view an XFA form. Being able to open a dynamic PDF in Acrobat does not mean it is a static PDF form or that it magically converts to a static PDF form.



Without any standards for XFA forms, as they expand over pages with content, the adaptive technology cannot keep up with the refreshing and often loses focus even when trying to go back and edit the answer. Content controls in Word are a good example of an XFA form type. They appear small but just start adding content and they expand to fit the content.



It would cost an exorbitant amount of development funding and resources to develop Word to the point where it would become an form designer that would allow for the conversion of form controls to tagged PDF.



Even Adobe has separated Acrobat rom Form Designer. They are two different applications with different pricing options. You can’t check the accessibility of a dynamic or static XFA form in Acrobat.



The best approach to designing forms in Word is to use the accessible document techniques you know…columns, Tab Stops, headings and so forth to create the form. Use tables ONLY for rating questions, not other parts of the form template.



Do not use symbols to represent radio buttons, lines or check boxes! Odds are you’ll have to artifact them. Additionally, you’ll need to make the form controls large enough to cover them up. If someone gets a Word version of the form, those who can see the form will start clicking on the squares or circles thinking they are real form controls, not placeholders for form controls.



Save the Word form template as a tagged PDF, add the form controls, then add the form tags and their annotations to the Tags Tree. Remember to add the Tooltips for all form controls.



If you want lines for those who might print the form, use the Appearance tab in the Acrobat form control Properties dialog to add an “underline” to the form control itself.



In regard to ToolTips:



  1.  In Word, they often don’t work, even if you have them added in the two places that are suggested.
  2.  The ToolTips or support text for content controls has never worked.
  3.  You can’t go into a content control that you need to add content to by pressing Enter.
  4.  Always check your Tooltips with a screen reader or TTS to see if there are spelling mistakes!



I just dis an overview of accessible PDF forms for the Guelph Accessibility Conference and have two proposals in for AHG: a pre-conference workshop on accessible PDF forms and a two hour general session on creating a form template.



Let me know if you have other questions.



Cheers, Karen





From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Deborah Armstrong
Sent: Friday, June 2, 2023 12:28 PM
To: 'Access Technology Higher Education Network' <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] Fillable forms in Word



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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