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Using Acrobat 7.0 Professional to make Adobe PDF forms accessible
In Acrobat Professional, you can open untagged and tagged Adobe PDF forms, add fillable form fields, set the tab
order, add alternate text to form fields, and tag the forms (if they are not already tagged). You can also edit the tags
of any tagged PDF form by using the TouchUp Reading Order tool or the tag tree.
When you are making PDF forms accessible by using Acrobat Professional, the workflow has the following steps.
Step 1: Add fillable form fields and descriptions
Acrobat Professional has a Forms toolbar that provides numerous tools for creating fillable form fields, such as
buttons, check boxes, list boxes, and text boxes. You can add a description to a field as you create the field. Just type
the description into the Tooltip box in the General tab of the field's Properties dialog box. Screen readers will read
this text aloud to the user. (You can also use the TouchUp Reading Order tool to add descriptions to form fields, as
described in "Section 11: Repairing reading order and basic tagging problems" on page 59.)
See "Creating Adobe PDF forms" in Acrobat 7.0 Help for instructions on using the Forms tools.
The Forms toolbar of Acrobat Professional
Adding a description as you create a form field—type the description into the Tooltip box for the field.
Step 2: Set the tab order
Although Acrobat Professional offers manual control over tab order, set the tab order to use the document's
structure. This setting provides the greatest accessibility.
To set the tab order of form fields to use the document structure:
Open the Pages tab of the navigation pane.
1
Select all the pages by pressing Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS).
2
From the Pages tab, choose Options > Page Properties.
3
In the Page Properties dialog box, select the Tab Order tab, and then select Use Document Structure.
4
ADOBE ACROBAT 7.0
Section 8: Making Adobe PDF forms accessible
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