Tagging Forms
- Daniel LaGrow
Instructions
Section 7.7: Tagging
When your PDF Tab Order is finished, it is time to tag your PDF. Tagging your form is a very long and repetitive process, but it does get easier and faster with time and practice. To tag your form field,
First, we need to create a Tags Root. Right now, we do not have one in our PDF sample. To create one, go to the Tags pane and right click on the No Tags Available text. Click Create Tags Root.
Next, go to the Options Menu and click Find.
In the Find Element box, go to the Find dropdown menu and choose Unmarked Annotations. Then check Search Document and click the Find button.
The first form field in your document should be highlighted. When you see this, click the Tag Element button.
The New Tag box will appear. In the Type dropdown menu, choose Form and click OK.
In the Tags Pane, you will see a Form Tag has been created and within it is an OBJR Tag with your form field inside it.
Go back to the Find Element box and repeat these steps until every single form field has been tagged.
Once everything has been tagged, we are going to tag our text for each form field. Start by creating a paragraph tag and placing each text inside. In this case, remember to only highlight the words and the colon. We will take care of the lines later.
Drag and drop all of the Form tags and OBJR tags into their respective Paragraph tags.
Section 7.8: Tagging Other Objects
Chapter 4 in this series has examples of how to tag most objects found in PDF documents. This section will explain what each item should be tagged as in the current situation. Feel free to apply these methods into your project if it will help your project become more accessible. But keep in mind that every project is different, so what may work in one project may not be best for another.
Object | Tag to Use |
|---|---|
The Full PDF | Document Tag |
Coastal Comforts Title | Heading Tag |
Employment/Job Application | Heading 1 Tag |
(All fields are required) | Paragraph Tag |
Personal Information, Education, Previous Employment, References, Disclaimer | Heading 2 Tag |
Disclaimer Text | Paragraph Tag |
Page Numbers | Paragraph Tag |
After you have your tags created, it is time to make your screen reader ignore all of the untagged content. This includes lines, or decorative images. To do this,
Go to the Options Menu and click Find.
In the Find Element dropdown menu click on Unmarked Content, check Search Document and click Find.
A bunch of pink boxes will appear around your document. Click Tag Element. Keep clicking Tag Element until you have everything tagged.
Place all of the tagged content into its own Paragraph Tag. Be careful, you may get some important content in the tag, so be sure to move that content to its own tag for the screen reader to read.
Highlight all of the items in your Paragraph Tag and then right click. In the menu, click Change to Artifact. Now the screen reader will skip those objects when reading to the reader. Then delete your Paragraph tag.
Section 7.9: Accessibility Checker
You have now reached the last step of our process before testing with a screen reader. We need to use Adobe’s Accessibility Checker. The accessibility checker will scan our entire document, from the tags, to the font used, to the color contrast, and many other accessibility attributes. After it is done checking, the accessibility checker will give us a notification on what issues need to be fixed and what fulfills accessibility requirements. Keep in mind though, that while accessibility checkers are very good, they should not be completely depended on. Think of them as a first step for testing accessibility. If you want to see if your document is completely accessible, it is recommended to test it with a screen reader. To use Acrobat’s Accessibility Checker,
Open the Accessibility Tool and click the Accessibility Check button.
In the Accessibility Checker Options box, you will see a list of 32 different attributes the accessibility checker will analyze. Click the Start Checking button to make it look for every issue.
On the left side of the screen, you will receive several dropdown menus of issues that need to be fixed. When you open the menus and select the issues, you can find instructions on how to fix the problems.
When you have all of your issues fixed, start testing your document with a screen reader.
PAC 2021
As discussed in previous sections of this series, PDF Accessibility Checker 2021 or PAC 2021 is an accessibility checker made for checking the accessibility of PDFs. This would be a good resource to use to compare results to the accessibility checker in Adobe Acrobat. To use PAC 2021,
Click on the upload button and select your PDF.
PAC 2021 will analyze your document and see if it passes WCAG 2.1 standards as well as PDF/UA Standards. For these examples we only need to worry about WCAG 2.1 standards and any new WCAG standards as they are released.
Section 7.10: Testing with a Screen Reader
Use NVDA or another screen reader to test your PDF. Everything in your PDF should be read by the screen reader in order. If anything is skipped, be sure to fix the reading order or tab order or any additional issues you may run into. Once you are done, the PDF should be fully accessible, and you can share it with your student, or other faculty that need it.