Guide
How to make a PDF form accessible
Tooltips, tab order, structure placement and the printed-form case. Forms are transactions, which makes them the highest-consequence documents you own.
About 12 minutes · moderate
Four things, in order
1. Every field needs an accessible name.
Tools → Prepare Form → double-click a field → Properties → General → Tooltip. That is the /TU entry, and it is what a screen reader announces.
Write what the field is, expanded to stand alone. If the visible label is Date under a heading Date of birth, the tooltip is Date of birth — the reader hears it without the heading. The condition →
2. Tab order must follow structure.
In the Fields pane: Options → Order Tabs by Structure. This writes /Tabs /S on each page. Without it, Tab follows the order the fields were created in, which on a two-column form is chaos. The condition →
3. Widgets must be in the structure tree.
Every field belongs inside a <Form> element, in the right place in the reading order. Acrobat’s Accessibility → Reading Order tool will tag an untagged field; getting it into the right position in the tree is a drag in the Tags panel. The condition →
4. Required fields and errors must be announced.
Mark required fields in the field properties, and make sure validation messages are text rather than only a colour change or a beep. A form that signals an error with app.beep() alone tells a deaf user nothing.
The printed-form case
Plenty of “forms” are not forms: they are boxes and rules drawn on the page, meant to be printed and filled in with a pen.
A screen reader encounters an underline and a square with no indication that anything is expected. PDF/UA covers this through /PrintField attributes describing each control, which Acrobat cannot set through its interface at all.
The better answer is almost always to convert it into a real form. Tools → Prepare Form will detect most drawn fields and offer to create widgets, and a form that can be completed on screen is more accessible than one that can only be printed — for a great many people, not only screen reader users.
Where Taggart fits
Taggart reports each field by name and type, so you can work through them without hunting:
Form field
'dateOfBirth'(/Tx) has no /TU tooltip and no /Alt on an enclosing structure element, so it has no accessible name.
Tab order and structure placement are mechanical and ship in “Fix All Safe”. Tooltips need your input — or the useFieldNames option, which derives a first draft by humanising the field name and marks every one it fills as derived from the field name — review the wording, so it never reads as a decision a person made.
Frequently asked questions
Does the visible label count as the field's name?
No. Text printed beside a field is ordinary page content with no connection to the widget. The accessible name comes from /TU on the field, or /Alt on the enclosing structure element. Nothing else is consulted.
What about a printed form with no real fields?
Boxes and rules drawn on the page are not form fields. They need /PrintField attributes describing what each control is, which is condition 24-001 — or, better, convert them into real form fields.
How do I check tab order?
Press Tab through the form and watch where focus goes. If it jumps around the page rather than following the reading order, the page is missing /Tabs /S. In Acrobat: Prepare Form, then in the Fields pane, Options → Order Tabs by Structure.
Related failure conditions
- 28-005 A form field has neither a TU entry nor an alternative description The /TU tooltip is the accessible name of a PDF form field. Without it the field has no name at all — the visible label printed next to it is not connected to the control.
- 28-008 A page containing an annotation does not contain a Tabs entry Any page carrying annotations must declare a tab order. PDF/UA-1 requires /Tabs /S — tab order follows the structure tree.
- 28-010 A widget annotation is not nested within a Form tag Every form control must sit inside a Form structure element.
- 24-001 Non-interactive forms are not tagged with the PrintField attribute A printed form — checkbox squares, signature rules, fill-in lines drawn on the page rather than implemented as widgets — needs /PrintField attributes so a reader can describe the control.
Check your own file. Taggart's validator is free and unlimited — no page cap, no watermark, no account.
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