Mark Boyden: Welcome to…
The first, be a Digital Ally of 2026.
Where we're focused on creating accessible PDF forms.
If that's what you're looking for, you're in the right place!
So, thanks for letting us be a part of your journey.
The goals of Be a Digital Ally is to cover the basic skills and principles behind accessible digital design, and to help
You and others who make digital content accessible to people with disabilities.
Our audience is content creators of any skill level,
And especially those newer to accessibility.
As a part of your journey, we always strive to create inclusive and accessible spaces, and that's what we're working towards here, so please be kind, polite, and respectful as you…
engage with us during this, and we also strive to ensure accessibility.
We have the captions going, so you can turn those on if you'd like.
Um, went too quickly through that. All right, um, a quick pee…
piece about Knowbility. Knowbility is an award-winning leader in digital accessibility.
Our mission is to create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities.
Founded in 1999, we are a 501c3 nonprofit. We are based in Austin, Texas, and serve a global audience.
Almost 27 years now.
So, we have community programs that we bring to the people, and our constituency. The Accessibility Internet Rally, which I'll talk a bit more in just a moment.
But it's our hackathon to…
to, uh, teach people how to create accessible websites.
AccessU is our upcoming conference. I'll mention a little bit more about that in a second.
Our Excess Works program is where we engage with people with disabilities who want to work as user test…
subjects in real life, and we pair them up with people who come to us looking for those types of folks.
And they're paid a fair wage.
We also have a focus in K-12 digital accessibility, and then this program, Be a Digital Ally.
Hey, we just finished up our accessibility internet rally. It's our annual web accessibility hackathon. We start recruiting it each year in June. We bring together web developers.
and nonprofits, or non-government organizations across the globe, as well as artists and musicians who need websites.
And we have created night-week accessibility training competition where we train people to
Build accessible websites, give them mentors,
And we have a fun-filled 8-week program, turn in our websites, and then we judge them, provide feedback, and we have the awards ceremony that we had a week ago on the…
On January 15th.
Uh, I ask everybody, I tell everybody about this program, it's how I came to Knowbility for the first time in 2000 and 2001, participating in that program.
The Air 2026 interest form is open, so if you or anybody else you know is interested, you can go to Knowbility.org slash air to find out more, to watch the video, to find out who won this last one.
Um, and to sign up for the entrance form for next year.
John Slate and AccessU is our annual training conference. It's hands-on, in-depth training. It's not just a bunch of sales jobs.
It's coming up May 11th through 14th, and it is a hybrid event.
We do it online via Zoom events, sort of like this, and we do it live, in person, in Austin, Texas.
As well, and it's immersive, whether you're here or remote.
More information at Knowbility.org slash AccessU.
Alright, services we also provide. This is what allows us to bring you the programs we talked about earlier. So we do accessibility testing, auditing for both websites and smart apps.
And help you develop and fix those accessibility issues in your…
applications. We also can provide leadership and strategic consulting to help you build a better team inside of your organization.
As well as training and accessibility at whatever level you want. We have some programs we already have together, or we can develop custom programs for you.
I talked about AccessWorks as well a moment ago, and we also have the Accessibility Help Desk, where you can
get a block of hours and call us to get help with accessibility in your applications.
At the end of the program, I will put this survey code back up, Knowbility.org slash badasurvey. That's short for Be a Digital Ally, B-A-D-A survey.
Um, so I'll bring that back again. You can grab it now, or stick around right afterwards to please give us feedback, because that's what feeds this program and helps us bring you
What topics you ask for.
You can stay connected with us. You can sign up for our newsletter.
Knowbility.org slash subscribe. You can find us on social media, at Knowbility.
Or you can email us, events at Knowbility.org.
Next month, program is already ready, um, it's the third Thursday, typically, at 3 p.m.
The Joy Zabala Fellowship for mentoring and Assistive Technology and Accessible Educational Materials.
Co-chairs Joan Larson and Terry Foss…
of the steering committee for Joy of Zabala, will be here.
And share with us about that program.
Technology for students with disabilities.
And they're both members of the QIAT leadership team, so you can sign up for that.
After you're done with this, uh, show.
Alrighty. During this little, uh, um…
a bit about how we'll handle things during this program.
If you have questions, you can put it at any moment in time in the Q&A. You can find the Q&A in the menu at the bottom of the screen.
And you can also ask anonymously that way. If you'd like to ask in person, you can raise your hand.
And that's in the, uh, at the bottom in the menu under React.
And you can type in the chat, but it'd be better if you can get them into the Q&A, either way.
So at this point, I'd like to introduce you to your instructor for today, Teenya Franklin.
She is Knowbility's Director of Community Programs and an expert in PDF accessibility and other document technology.
Teenya, please take it away.
Teenya Franklin: Hi, y'all. Um, Mark, there's a comment in the chat that some registered users are unable to join the session, that they're waiting in the lobby.
And that one's from…
Mark Boyden: I'll see what I can do, thank you.
Teenya Franklin: Awesome. So, my first question to you before I begin, um…
is… does anybody on the call…
create forms in Word for conversion to PDF.
And you can either put it in the chat window.
For me. Yes, no.
And you can…
Yes, yes, yes, no.
Okay?
Okay. Ah, a lot of you.
Mark Boyden: And you can share your screen when you're ready.
Teenya Franklin: Yeah. Okay, so that said, I'm going to… this is a basic, a very basic class on creating PDF
form fields in Acrobat, but…
I want to, before we go to a sample file, I have a short
PowerPoint that I want to talk about.
When you're designing forms in Word for conversion to PDF, because that's kind of a key…
Um, an integral part of creating accessible forms is that your source file or your Bible, as I like to call it, needs to be accessible.
So let me…
Hide my meeting chat, I will rely on Mark and or Jill to help me know if there's things in chat. I'm going to share my screen real quick.
Alright, now I'm just gonna share… I'll share the whole screen so I can make it big.
Alright. So…
Let's talk a little bit about designing.
forms in Word for conversion to PDF.
So, the first thing that you want to do is think accessible, right?
Before you create any document, there are design decisions which you need to think about.
Especially when they're being converted to PDF, as certain elements such as color, font type, size, and more cannot easily
be edited in a PDF. They can be edited, however,
If that document
the PDF is already tagged, you stand a chance of breaking all your tags, right?
So you want to kind of think about things as you're going.
The word is often the blueprint.
forms, and Acrobat builds on it. This class is taught specifically to Acrobat and on a Windows machine, so if you have a Mac,
Things may be a little bit different if you don't use Acrobat.
things may be a little bit different. Fox at IT is similar to Acrobat, so it shouldn't be too much different, right?
So, if the award file's messy, the PDF's messy. If it's clean, tagging and field placement are easier.
Um, assistive technology…
relies on form-filled labels, roles, and states, logical reading, and tab order, if it's not tagged correctly, users may not know what the field is for, whether it's required or how to complete it.
Basic form structures, accessible forms should have clear instructions at the top of the form or along the way, depending on how it's built.
headings that break the form into sections, for example, personal info, contact details,
Make sure you're… your related fills have a logical grouping, and your labels or your text
is placed consistently to the left or above, however your form is designed.
It helps the structure support understanding and efficient navigation for not only screen reader, but keyboard users always, also.
So, one of the first things you want to do is make sure that you're using Word's built-in styles for semantic instruction.
the visual formatting, um, that you see on the ribbon next to the font section.
bold color italics, it only changes the appearance. It doesn't label headings for screen readers programmatically.
And without those styles, the documents are going to lack structure that assistive technology can use.
In addition, when you convert to PDF, you're going to have to build in your heading structure. Nobody wants to do that, it just takes forever.
Right, so you want to make sure that you're defining
headings, you're using built-in paragraph and character styles and list orders.
Um, his proper semantic heading structures.
Heading 1, Title of the document. Now, here's something that most people are unaware of.
In Word, the title style?
does not convert to a title in PDF. PDF does not have an associated title tag.
So, when you're going to convert to PDF, always use Heading 1 for your title of your document.
And then go down consecutively 2, 3, 4, and so on if needed.
And what not to do with headings is if you have…
pages with the same title, you don't need to use multiple headings, just continue with the content for the sections.
And don't use headings at the top of the page.
or a bulleted or numbered list has been contained from the previous page, so if you have, like, 8 bullet items on one page and 4 on the next, don't repeat your heading. It's going to break the flow of the list, and you have to merge it together.
in Acrobat as well.
So, a lot of people like to use warm-forward controls, which can cause issues. Legacy fields and macros don't always convert into the fillable PDF fields. ActiveX controls can block tagging and screen reader access, and those elements can often disappear or break during conversion.
So, when you're just… let me get rid of this.
floating meeting controls. Sorry, y'all.
There we go. So…
So, when you're…
When you're designing layouts for fields outside tables,
You want to use your columns thoughtfully, and use words column formatting. No tabs or manual spacing. All that does is add space, and…
And assistive technology will pronounce them and hear them.
It also causes problems when you're tagging in a PDF.
You want to make sure that your columns are wide enough for field placement and avoid wrapping questions across columns.
When you're using… when you're designing your forms, make sure you're leaving space for fields. You can use underlining… underlined formatting to indicate
blank areas. Avoid underscores, because it will read underscore, underscore, underscore, or dash dash dash.
And make sure that you leave extra space for longer responses or comments.
You can do that by using paragraph spacing, so that you don't…
have a bunch of blank lines from using ENTER to provide that space. If you use ENTER to provide spacing, those lines are going to come through as blank lines in your PDF, and you're going to have to go find them in Artifact
You want to keep it linear. One question, one field per line, whether it's radio buttons or checkboxes.
You want to try to avoid side-by-side fields unless they're clearly labeled.
Again, use formatting tools, not manual spacing to guide your layout.
Acrobat needs the space to drop in the fields. If the
Layout's too tight, fields are either gonna overlap, get misaligned, or end up being in an 8-point font, which
Nobody wants.
So, you want to make sure you're using clear, descriptive labels, for example, first name, last name, email address.
If you've got areas where you need more than one email address, for example, if I wanted a form to tell me what a presenter's email address is, and a co-presenter's email address, label those clearly, so that when you're doing your form fields themselves, you can give them an appropriate
field name. That makes it easy for continued authors or changes to that form to be made.
And it also will help with your tooltips.
left-aligned labels for easier scanning and place your fields consistently.
Again, I can't say it enough, use paragraph styles, not tabs for spacing.
So, common form fields include text fills, like name, email, address, check boxes, yes, no, agreements, radio buttons, which are a select-only-one option.
Drop-downs and list boxes, which avoid if you can.
Those can cause problems for people with mobility impairment. It's better to use in those instances for a state or a country, a text field, right?
Each field must have a clear label, be in logical order, and correct rules so it can announce it properly to assistive technology.
So, when you're designing…
Think about what to use and when, when it comes to checkboxes, radio buttons, and drop-downs. Checkboxes used for, like,
Select that it'll all apply.
And make sure you label it clearly in your… your… your Word template. Select all that apply.
radio buttons you want to use for things where you can only have one choice.
and label it clearly, choose one response.
One of the things that's not on here is required.
If you want a fill… to be filled out, it's required.
Put an asterisk and put the word required.
And put a note at the top somewhere, asterisk indicates required fields, right? Because you don't want to use color alone.
If you put it in red, someone's colorblind, they're not gonna see it.
So, and again, avoid if possible for drop-downs.
And the field type should match the user task and be clearly labeled.
Make it clear. Should it be a checkbox or a ready button? For example, I've gotten many files in Word
that are all squares, right? People use squares for radio buttons and checkboxes.
Because you can change that format in Acrobat.
But I need to know if I'm the one making the PDF, which one you want.
So use simple squares or circles. For checkboxes, squares are great.
Radio button circles are great, no bevels or tiny shapes.
try to leave enough space around each option for field placement.
And don't cram multiple options in tables into one cellar line.
And keep your consistent layout across the forum.
For your labeling tips, make sure you include field instructions in. Select all apply, or choose one.
That helps both users and remediators understand the intent.
It leads to faster remediation and better usability.
Using tables to create forms. So…
Tables should only be used for data not to manage layout. However, 9 tenths of the population is using tables, especially state agencies, for clear, consistent layouts. So, if you must…
Provides sufficient spacing to allow for form fills to be added in.
Please only put one question or one field per cell, so in the cases of radio buttons and checkboxes,
one set, not two. I'll show you an example in a minute.
try to avoid multi-level lists inside tables.
Oftentimes, if I have a list in a table,
And that table is for visual.
and design layout only, it's easier for both me and the end user if I tag that as a list.
in Acrobat, which maintains the table layout.
And allows the end user who's using assistive technology to easier navigate through the list and form fields, rather than
tables and forms mode.
Um, so those are just suggestions. They're not hard, fast.
So, to reduce the cognitive loan for screen reader users, format content, and we're using simple tables.
Allow the content to be tagged… and again, this is what I just mentioned, it will allow the content to be tagged in Acrobat as a list or text with form fields, right, preserving the layout. And it creates a linear, predictable experience for assistive technology users.
Tables, what not to do.
Please, please do not use tab or enter to create a visual table layout.
Screen readers interpret this as one long line jumbling the content, because content is read from left to right, top to bottom. So if you use TAB,
or enter, it's gonna create, as I said before, just space.
Um, try not to use them purely for layout and formatting. It announce rows and columns, which can confuse the intended meaning.
And again, as I previously mentioned,
someone who's remediating it.
And has the experience, can tag it.
in alternate means, and still maintain that visual layout.
Do not allow single rows to break across pages. If possible, it disrupts the reading flow and causes loss of context.
Because, again, it announces header and column rows.
Again, it can be remediated in Acrobat, but takes long… takes longer to do it.
So, to create tables,
Use the true table… create true tables by using the insert table function in Word.
Enter your headers and first and last columns are labeled and defined.
Use short descriptive names for your column and row headings.
Set the option to repeat the header road on each page.
For complex tables include alternative text to describe the table contents. Now, if you have to pass the Acrobat Checker,
It will ask you for a table summary, but that should be very short.
Right?
So, this slide, I'm not going to cover, it's… it's literally step-by-step instructions on how to label your header row, first and last columns.
You guys will get this in a couple of days when I've finished, um…
finessing it, shall we speak.
And again, this is allowing the header row
for header tables that span multiple pages, make sure that that header row is repeated at the top of each page.
Because screen readers rely on headers to interpret the cells, meaning if the header row isn't repeating,
Losers can lose contact when they can… table continues on to the next page, especially if it's
The table that spans 10 pages.
So you want to make sure that you do that.
Um, so, and here's a step-by-step screen of how to…
apply the repeat as header row.
Um, here's an example for table forms. Please don't do this.
So you'll… on my screen, I have a three-column
One row table, just as a sample.
And then the first column…
first cell, you can see that it's got two questions, but with one number one.
In the second…
column cell. It's got two sets of
radio checkboxes.
Which is not proper. Um, I take this from a sample I got, that's completely improper, because those are not check boxes, those are radio buttons. You can only pick one or the other.
And then comments. And in this slide, there's macros built in the back end, so you can see how the macros can cause a problem.
So, this is the what-to-do example. You can have…
the fields in there. But you should only have one question, one line item per
row per cell. As you see, I have a 1,
And then one question, and I broke the two… the second question into the next cell.
Because then you can tag it as list items with form fields in them.
And it could also be tagged as a table. And if you notice…
the header cells are appropriate now. It's an item response selection and comments, right? Whereas on the previous slide, it said item checkbox.
and comment. So, not… the checkbox is not very contextual there.
So I just kind of wanted to give you an example of that.
So, Word to PDF conversion.
So, I'm gonna open my chat real quick and ask a question.
How many of you use the…
export as, or…
save as Acrobat from the ribbon, the plugin at the very top.
Okay, anybody else?
Okay…
Okay, and now how many of you have experienced issues with that in the backend PDF?
Okay, so I'm going to give you a better option.
When I remember. That's… that's nice. Okay, so let me go ahead and hide this again.
So…
Why is it… there we go. So, here's the issues with export options. First of all, it bypasses Words PDF settings.
It may strip your alt text, form field, and heading tags.
And we'll generate an unstructured, dumb PDF.
So, screen readers can lose navigation landmarks and jump unpredictably, and then you have a lot of work to do in your back-end PDF, right?
Issues with the Acrobat tab in the office, you know, the little Acrobat
That you see in the ribbon at the very top. Again, it overrides word accessibility tags often.
And it may reorder or remove tags, or introduce proprietary tags, which will break your reading order,
and makes content unreadable for some assistive technology.
User impacts, headings, tables, and images may lose contacts. Users… context. Users may miss information, lose their place, or become disoriented.
So here's the better option, and I've been doing this…
I'm about to date myself, y'all don't laugh at me. For about 25 years now.
Here's your better option. So you're going to use Save As.
So you're gonna go to File, Save As, and I'll show you this in a minute, and then you're going to choose your options.
This will retain your structure, your heading list tables, retains your alt text and form-filled tags for images and interactive elegance.
elements, where we hopefully maintain your logical reading order and navigation of landmarks.
And it shows your options dialog box, so you can confirm that you want the document structure tags for accessibility.
So, this is how you do it.
You go to your File tab in Word, you'll choose Save As,
and pick your save as… save…
location, where you want to put it, right?
And so, on my screen, it's not a very good image, because it's blown up.
But when you get there, you're gonna go to Save as Type, and you're gonna open the drop-down and choose PDF.
Then you've got a little box underneath that that says Options, and it's here.
In yellow, which…
I'm using color to convey information, but it's going to be right underneath.
And it'll say options. So when you select the options menu, it's going to open a dialog box.
here. Why does this keep showing up?
And this is… this is what you want to make sure you do.
You're going to locate the include non-printing Information section, you're going to make sure that…
Both checkboxes for document properties.
And document structure tags for accessibility are selected.
And then under PDF options, you want to make sure that bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded as selected.
then you're going to hit OK, and you're going to save your file.
Okay, so now I'm gonna come out of this…
And I'm going to go to a sample file, and we're going to get down into the meat of it.
Alright. Do we have any questions so far?
All right.
Mark Boyden: What about the export?
create PDF XPS document option.
Teenya Franklin: I have a question. When a PDF document contains a form section with fields such as first name, last name, address, email address, and notes,
And the entire section is tagged as a figure.
Uh, no.
So,
Is this considered correct and compliant? Should these elements instead be tagged as form fields with appropriate labels to ensure accessibility for screen reader user?
Yes, so here's the thing with automated checkers. They don't…
Especially Acrobat, it's not gonna catch it, right? If it comes through as a figure, it thinks it's a figure.
Right? So, it should absolutely not be a figure, and that would tell me that something happened either in convert…
conversion, um, or creation.
So they should absolutely be tagged as text with form fields and appropriate labels, and I'm going to kind of show you guys how to do that.
So, I'm going to start from the Word file, and I'm going to convert it.
Mark Boyden: Hey, Teenya?
Teenya Franklin: Yup.
Mark Boyden: Yeah, we had a couple other questions, if you want to address them. They're in the Q&A.
First question is, what about the export, create PDF, XPS document option?
When you're saving…
So that's this one.
Not sure document.
Teenya Franklin: It doesn't… it can cause tagging issues. It can cause you to have more and
work on the back end.
And I always tell people, Acrobat, you can be…
You can have two people side by side, working on the same file, following the same steps, using the same
tools. Each one can convert it and come up with two different things. One of the things I tell people to not do is ask themself why Acrobat does the things that it does, because it will
drive you insane.
Yes, you will receive the presentation slides, but…
It will be a little while. The save as Adobe…
That's this slide here, the issues with the Acrobat tab in MS Office.
Which is…
Let me hide these floating again.
So this, you're talking about this acrobat here.
This here doesn't work right.
They don't like it. Is there a better product than Adobe Acrobat?
There is, but they're highly expensive.
Um, I have been working solely with Acrobat for 25 years.
Um, we can talk about other things.
But there are other products that can be used if you have access to them. But for this training, we're just going to focus on Acrobat.
Um, is it Best Plasters?
So, as far as displaying borders on the table, yes, you can have your borders, because
When you go into…
the PDF, you can tag it without those borders. Yes, always display your borders if you're using a table.
Or you can… you don't have to, but if you want it to be identified as a table, you can.
Um, so the Word file, Save As, that's exactly what I talked about it a minute ago, which is what we're going to do. That's the pro… that's the one that I use, which is this one here.
Mark Boyden: I've got a couple other for you, Teenya. Gabby writes, prior to my exposure to accessibility and document creation, I always used this preferred method. My employer specifically told us to use the Acrobat tag,
tab to conserve tags.
Why even have the Acrobat tab? Why would accessibility folks recommend using this tab if data is lost in the conversion?
Teenya Franklin: So, here's the thing, it's not always lost in conversion, but it can be, because Acrobat and Office don't always play nice.
Um, you have Save as Acrobat on the left navigation, and my Save as option, but I also have it on the Acrobat toolbar.
So, I'm on the Acrobat toolbar, and I don't have…
that version, so I'm not sure which option you're using in.
it in, but I always save as Acrobat.
Adobe PDF, which is what we're fixing to do here.
Was there another question I missed?
Mark Boyden: Yes. Jen asks, is it best practice to display borders on the table, both inside and outside, so it is visibly identifiable as a table?
Teenya Franklin: So, this is how I do mine. So, yes, you can have your borders.
You can have it visually identified as a table, so it still visually looks like a table, and we're going to kind of go through some of this and tag it.
Because what happens with these borders, you can tag it as a table,
But in instances where you want just the table for layout purposes, there's multiple ways to achieve something, right? So you can tag it as a table with form fields in it, which does cause a little bit of an
of a cognitive load for screen reader users.
Um, there is a setting where you can have it read both, but it's an advanced setting.
Mark Boyden: That's all we have at the moment.
Okay.
Except… oh, there's a new one that popped on, uh…
Into the chat.
Teenya Franklin: It's a resource from Marcia.
Yeah, alright.
So, again, there's multiple… now, I'm gonna tell you this before I get started. There are multiple ways in which to achieve something in Acrobat.
Um, so the workflow, or as far as how you choose to do it, is going to depend on how you work the best, right?
So, the first thing I'm gonna start with here is I've got my sample form in Word, and I'm going to go to File,
I'm going to save as…
And you can use Save as Adobe PDF as well, but I'm used to going this way, and I go to this PC, I'm going to browse…
I'm gonna choose where I want it.
And then here…
I'm going to choose PDF.
And then I'm gonna open my options and make sure that, by default, these are selected, but I just want to make sure I didn't change anything when I was making things.
And then I'm gonna… I have open file after publishing selected, so I'm gonna click OK.
I'm gonna save it.
And we have our PDF.
So…
Now, because I chose…
the options and told it to structure it.
I have my…
structure here, right? Now, it's… it's… it's not perfect, right? There's things that need to be fixed.
But you have… you can see I have my headings.
and paragraph. Now, here's an issue here. One of the first things that you need to do…
When you're working on forms.
is before you add in your form fields,
go through, especially if you've
got tags. You want to go through and you want to walk your tags, and you want to look at what you have.
Because you're gonna need to change things and tag it properly.
So that when you put your form fields in and you have…
tag annotations selected.
It will put it in the right spot.
Right? So, right here, you can see that I have tag annotations selected. If you open up the little drop-down next to the I in your tags.
I have a couple of things. Tag annotation, apply role mapping, and highlight content.
That's so that I can see where I'm at in my tags.
Which puts a, um…
Lovely little hot pink box around it, right? So I can already see that I need to…
come in here and re-tag name, email address, and phone number so that I just have the text.
And not the lines, right? Because we don't want the lines red.
So, the first thing I'm gonna do is open up my accessibility tool, go to the reading order,
And I have some tricks that make some of this a little faster.
So right now, all I'm gonna do is deal with…
these three paragraph tags. I'm going to take name,
text paragraph, email address…
And the colon, text, paragraph.
Phone number, text paragraph. Now, again,
The way that I work, in the order I go in,
It may be different than the order you go in, depending on how your brain works. I like to fix everything as I go.
Before I do the form field, so my next step…
is I'm going to find…
this name paragraph right here.
And do you see the outline?
If you expand the tag where the line is,
In the tags tree, and you right-click on it, and you tell it to show it in the content panel.
It'll take you directly to it, so you don't have to dig.
Now, I don't have to make these artifacts one by one, I can do them all at once. If you choose to do this, be very careful what you do.
Because once you artifact it,
There's no bringing it back easy.
You can remove it, sometimes it will disappear, sometimes you'll get lucky and it won't, so just be very careful.
So what I want to do is I want to get rid of all of these lines, so this P tag…
PTA tag for email address that has the line, and the same for the phone number, because I don't want them read aloud, and I don't need them in my tags.
So I'm gonna left-click on the first one, I'm gonna hold my Ctrl key on my keyboard.
I'm gonna grab the next two.
I'm going to right-click. I'm going to hit Create Artifact from the Contacts menu.
Then I'm going to tell it to choose Layout.
nothing else need to be touched, just change it to layout and click OK.
And if I go back to my tags,
You'll see that I now have name, I have email address, and phone number, and I have some blank, empty tags.
Right? I don't have to delete those all one by one either.
If you come up here to tags,
at the very top, and you right-click where it says Tags,
You tell it to delete empty tags.
And they go away. And then I'm gonna save this real quick.
Right? I'm gonna do the same thing. This space is actually part of a bounding box for the figure.
So, let me just do this real quick.
There we go.
Hating 2, paragraph H2. So now I have name, email address, phone number. I know this section's clean, right? So now I can move to the next section.
So, what I've done here…
is in my Word file.
If you notice, there's no… if I go to the next tag, there's no spaces in between.
That is because I used paragraph spacing in the Word document to give it enough space to have a multi-line
text field inserted into here.
Right? And if I go down again…
go to my next H2.
And then it's gonna go to…
the two questions, which are going to be in the proper order.
Because I used proper column formatting.
When I created the file in Word.
Right? Which means I can drop in my form fields, and it's gonna go in the right reading order.
Um, and then I have some blank spaces here, right? So again, I can open that up.
And let me drop that down a little bit.
And I can click on the spaces.
In the tags panel, the container. You always want to click on the container when you're doing this, not the tag.
Click the container, right-click.
Show and Content Panel.
create artifact layout, right? We don't want blank spaces.
Okay, so that whole first page is clean.
Right?
Now, moving to the second page…
So these came through as figures, which is fine. We're gonna actually artifact those, because what we're going to do is we're gonna insert a radio button on top of that,
And it's gonna cover that hole.
circle, but you don't want the figure behind it, or the path.
Right? So, I can do the same thing with these three.
Here, and we're going to do the same thing.
With the checkboxes, we make them artifact, just like we did.
So, a real fast way to do that, since you know where they're at and you know it says path,
So you're gonna go to the first one, go into Show and Content Panel.
And they might not be where you expect them, but…
If you hit your shift key,
And you hold down…
It'll highlight as you go.
So, it's highlighting all the checkboxes.
and the radio buttons. Now, I can see that I have all the ones that I want selected, because they
I have that highlight content on, so it's got that pink box around them.
Then I can right-click, create artifact,
Layout, click OK.
Now, if we go back to our tags…
Delete empty tags again.
And you can do that all at the end if you want. Again, it's all dependent upon how you work.
We'll start at the top of my page, and make sure that it's correct.
So now you can see that my text is just tagged as text and the boxes are gone.
With the exception of here on other Please Specify.
We need to do the same thing that we did above.
And make the text text.
And then an easy way to find it, you don't have to dig in your tags, you can double-click on it.
Go to your context menu,
Find tag from selection, and from there…
I see the one below it.
The line, I want to show content panel. Now, here's the thing.
There are always more than one way.
to create an artifact.
If you choose to draw a box around this and use your reading order tool and hit background artifact,
it will still show up in your reading order.
The reason I use the content panel is because I don't like that in my reading order. It confuses me.
So, I have cognitive issues where I need a clean file, so I always go to my content panel to get rid of those.
So I'm going to right-click there…
create artifact, layout, click OK.
Okay. I'll just delete that tag.
So then we have our table.
And as you can see, there's a lot of spaces and things in the middle that we don't want, right? The only thing that we really want to stay
Is this yes, this no?
Yes and no, because we're going to put form fields in here.
Right? So…
I want to…
And you'll see that they're all labeled.
that my table is labeled properly.
So if I go here…
do tables and figures, you can see it's all in the table, and it's all there.
Show a content panel.
And again, this time I'm going to use my control key when I go through the content panel, because they're not back-to-back.
So, I'm gonna hit that.
They have this first band, which is the first space and the first cell.
Get the next one.
I'm gonna… I do not want the yes, but I want the span there.
The no stays. Another span here.
span here.
And the spans are the spaces.
Right? And then these four paths, I guarantee, are going to be my radio buttons.
So I want to grab all of those and create artifacts out of those.
You can do it all at once.
Choose Layout, click OK.
So now it's a little cleaner, right?
And when we go in and add our form fields, it'll be a lot easier for us to do.
So, since I already know I have another one…
I'm gonna go back into this one and do the same thing.
On the next page.
And that's gonna be page 3.
There we go.
item, response, so… let's see here…
blank space. I want to get rid of that one?
I want to get rid of that blank space, and that one.
As well as that one.
And I see there's a blank space here, so I'm going to go ahead and get rid of that as well.
Now we have a cleaner form here. I still have…
Couple of…
You can see in the reading order are 25 and 26, those are those boxes behind it, so I still need to find those.
Aha. Here they are.
Okay. So now…
Gonna hit save.
I want to go back to my tags.
I'm gonna tell it to delete empty tags.
And then I did do it here.
That'll end up having…
form fields put in.
And you'll notice that when you're doing nested tags, it will leave some in, and you'll just say you just want to make sure you clean up your tags first.
Those are actually right.
You can also do this afterward, but…
I found that a lot of times, if you wait and you put in your form fields first and your reading order is out of order,
you, when you go to correct your reading order, it breaks.
your entire…
form.
Okay.
So, now that we're all cleaned up,
We're gonna go into…
Starting to add in our form fields.
So to do that,
I don't know how many of you have your Acrobat set up.
But I have all my tools.
And mine is set to classic view. If you have the new version, or the new view of Acrobat, this is going to be a little different. Your stuff's going to show on the right, and the way you get there is going to be different.
So, for me, it's all on the…
On the right-hand side. And to add these on,
to your toolbar.
There's, uh, across the top of Acrobat, you see Home, Tools, and then the file. If you go to the Tools tab,
Shows you all the tools that are available.
If it says open, then it's already on the toolbar. If it says add…
You're gonna add it, and when you click add, it adds it over here.
Okay?
So, any questions before I start?
With the tagging, or the fields.
Okay. Step 1, you go to Prepare Form.
And one of the things that you want to make sure that you have on, it says for… is…
form-filled detection is on.
I have that on. Sometimes it will put in form fields and blank spaces that don't belong there, which is another reason you clean it up.
Um, but it helps because if you have things that are labeled property, it should put in the form fields where they need to be.
And this is the source file here.
So I'm going to click Start.
And… let's look at it.
So, what happens is, you see the form fields in,
the text. And over here, you see…
which you have in your…
forms pain.
On the right, for me.
Now, what you want to do before you start messing with everything is you want to make sure that
everything is in there, and it's not, right? Now, one of the things that happens…
is when you leave a space, instead of putting a box,
Acrobat's not going to recognize that should be a form field, right? It's just a blank space, right?
So what I want to do here is I need to go ahead and I need to add a text field here.
That's multi-line. I need to add two text fields here.
The radio buttons came through.
And we'll look at the tooltips and the labels in just a moment.
All the checkboxes came through, as well as the other, please specify.
Now, in here, you'll see that the form fields are there.
However, you got one here that's extra, right?
Because there was an extra space.
Because that's actually a header cell. So what I want to do right there is get rid of that.
And it did the same thing next to the yes-no, because it saw whitespace.
So I'm gonna get rid of that.
And I'm gonna get rid of that.
Okay, so that… that one's cleaned up a little bit rather nicely.
So I'm going to go to the next table.
And as you can see, they're all in there.
And that's the end of the sample. But what I want to do…
Because every form field needs to have its own unique name.
or label, and it also needs to have a tooltip.
Now, when you're talking about labels and tooltips,
You want to make sure that they're not exactly the same. A label tells…
tells you what it is. It tells the author what it is, right?
And it's… the labels on the page, so that's tagged as text for end users.
But for someone who's editing a form…
You want to make sure that your label
is consistent and easily identifiable. For example, you can see that name is fine, right?
However, if you want your first and last, someone to put their first and last name in there…
You kind of want to provide those instructions, so…
You're gonna right-click on the field, and you're going to go to Properties.
It's gonna bring up the text field properties box.
So, on name…
Name can stay, that's fine, because that's just the back end.
The tooltip is what the end user sees and what you see over Hover, and what assistive technology hears.
So, for the tooltip, I'm gonna put…
Enter… first…
And last name.
I'm gonna tab out of it. Now, there's ways you can format the form fields if you want.
There's appearance, you can do a border color, which I have as none, a fill color.
You can change the text size to where it comes out an appropriate size.
And you can change the font type so that when they type in it, it comes out in a certain type of font as well.
put options, and we'll address this in a little bit.
Check spelling, multi-lying, scroll along text…
actions, these would be for links.
and format, validate, calculate.
For the most part, you're just going to mess with the general.
and the appearance, right? So I don't like to put borders around mine. I have it set to show…
excuse me. As… as just, um…
I highlighted.
Okay, so I'm going to move to the next one.
Now, here's the cool thing about the properties. You don't have to close them.
As you're moving through your form fields. You can leave it open.
And go and change your tooltips easily.
So, for email address, because you don't want the label and the tooltip to be the same, you need to provide instructions.
So you could put enter…
Email address, right?
Plain and simple.
Phone number. Now, I've got 3 different fields here for phone number.
One is for the area code, one is for the first three digits, and one is for the last 4 digits. Now,
I designed it this way on purpose to show…
that there's a variety of ways that it can be done. You could do a single text field that just says, please enter your phone.
phone number, and then the tooltip would be, please enter your
phone number, area code.
First, or including area code, right?
So, this is going to be… this is phone number area code, so I'm going to change the name of it.
So that any feature editor will know.
that that's the right field without having to dig.
And for the tooltip, I'm going to put in…
Enter phone number area code.
Right? And the next one…
You notice how it says undefined?
Because it only associated the first cell.
The first form filled with phone number.
This is going to be…
Phone number… I'm gonna put first 3, again, for editors.
And yes, it would be simpler to just do this as a single text field.
Make sure your spelling is right, too, because people who use refreshable braille displays will pick up your spelling errors.
So on this one, I'm going to put enter…
First 3…
digits, or numbers.
I'm out of it, then the next one is gonna be…
Did you just do?
I'm actually going to leave this misspelled so that you can see.
Um, the difference when we go to…
However.
Okay? I'm gonna save.
Now, at any time when you're working,
Oh, so you have to say, when you go to save it, it's going to ask you to save it, because it's now a form.
So, I'm actually going to come in here and call this a form.
And… save it.
So at any time when you're working in your form fields, if you want to see what it looks like,
This is in my way, y'all, sorry.
There's a little preview button right here.
at the top of your… of your form fields pane.
If you click preview, you can actually see.
When you hover over, you can see your tooltip.
And as you can see, you can see my spelling mistake as well.
So you really want to be careful with your spelling.
And then to get out of that, you just go back to Edit.
Okay? So, for a multi-line text field that you need to enter,
At the very top of Acrobat, these are your…
various options for form fields. Some of these you'll never use.
Um, a note on a date, if you ask for a date, the date…
that I've discovered that this date field…
Is it very accessible? So I would just ask for it in text format, and use your tooltip to tell them what format you want it in.
So, for this, I need a multi-lane text field.
So I'm going to select a text field.
I'm gonna put the start of the box where I want it, and I'm just simply going to expand it.
out. I'm going to right-click and go to Properties.
And so on this one, you have a briefly described the strangest anomaly or issues you've encountered.
when tagging a PDF accessibly. I don't want to put that whole thing, right? So this is going to be the name of this is going to be…
PDF, strangest.
Anomaly.
That's going to be the name of this.
The tooltip for this one is going to be…
Enter…
Um, the strangest…
anomaly.
you have encountered. Because you don't want it to repeat…
what the question is, right? Or what you want.
So, you don't want to retype out whole, briefly describe. You don't… you don't need that. You just tell them to enter the strangest anomaly they encountered, or enter whatever the data is in question.
Okay? So here…
You can do the same thing.
Now, you can actually duplicate
or copy and paste.
form fields, but when you do that, you gotta be really careful, because it's going to give you really…
funky numbers, right? So if I was to copy this…
Just for an example, and I hit paste.
And I come down…
It's got the same exact title and the same tooltip, so you need to make sure that you go back and you change those, right?
So for right now, I'm going to Ctrl-Z.
twice, three times, because I forgot to do something.
I need to go into the properties of this multi-line text field.
And go over to Options.
And I want to make sure I select this multi-line, and make sure that Scroll Long Text.
is checked as well.
Okay? I'll close that, and I'm gonna save.
And yes, Acrobat will jump. Please don't ask why it just does.
So here…
I've got text in two columns.
So what I need is two text fields.
So… I'm just gonna do one.
Drag it down. In this instance, I am going to copy it.
And paste it, and when you do this, there's no telling where Acrobat's gonna put it on the page, so you'll have to move it.
I'm gonna put it right underneath it.
And I'm gonna go to Properties…
And for the name on this one, I'm gonna put Accessibility Meaning.
Enter…
Accessibility…
means to you.
And here, it's gonna be usability.
And then, again, on both of these…
I need to put multi-line, so I can just jump back and forth from box to box.
Hit multi-line, and click Save.
Okay. So what I like to do before I move to the next page is make sure that all of my
Form fields are in the right…
tab order. So to do that, you can either come here,
into the fields, and you can…
There's a little more thing that has some…
tools, and then you've got fields in this context menu.
I have mine to set order tabs by Structure, which is important.
So when you do that, it should order them, but if you go back and you add a form filled in, it might not put it in the right order.
So another thing that I like to do is come up here to the drop-down,
It's a teeny tiny little drop-down.
Which I wish they'd change, because you can barely see it, but if you open that,
There's a show tab numbers.
You click on that, it's going to give you this dialog back that says… box that says to change it, sort it manually.
Great. We know that. Wonderful.
So now you can see these itty-bitty numbers.
Up in the tiny little corners of
The left-hand side of the form fields.
Right? And you can see that these form fields are indeed in the correct order.
Okay? I always like to do that page by page, because if I do the whole document and I forget, and then I go and I do…
because I have a feeling that this one did not tag the annotations like it's supposed to, and I go to add them in.
it's gonna jack it up.
Um, so that's the first page.
So, does anybody have any question on text fields before I move on?
I can't see the Zooms. Go ahead.
Mark Boyden: Let's… yeah, I've seen some people artifact… we got a couple other questions, I'm gonna say those for the… well…
You had previously, from Joe, we… it says you had previously stated not to use underscores for fields. What is used in this document for the lines?
Teenya Franklin: It's an underline.
So, I had… it just has underline… it's an underline, it, um…
It's just an underline. You, like, highlight the space, and you hit underline, and it'll give you an underline.
Now, again, you can't… if you're going to convert to PDF,
You can use underline if you're going to artifact it. If you're going to leave it in Word, don't do that.
Right? So, if you're gonna… you're gonna convert it. Also, Underline gives you, like, spaces in between them, like little thoughts.
For example, when you have a TOC and they've got those lead dots,
Those are red as well. So…
You can if you're going to artifact them.
Next.
Mark Boyden: Uh, Christina asked, I've seen some people artifact the question text and put the full question in the tooltip. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
Teenya Franklin: No.
So, here's the thing.
So you're saying, to clarify, you're saying that, for example, they would artifact this text…
And then just put the entire question in the toolkit.
So the thing about that is, is that you have to be able to tie this form field to some container
on the page, right? So if they're doing that, then it's not tied, and it's not going to have an OBGR tag.
I would need to see an example of that, because that just doesn't sound like a good idea.
At all.
Mark Boyden: We have some other questions, too, but I think it might be best at this point, Teenya, to hit these and then allow people who, um, have some additional questions to, uh, stick around afterwards.
Okay, I'm gonna move forward.
And then we can hit any of these that are left over.
Okay.
When we, uh, share the video and stuff next week. Because you've still got a few things you're working on here.
Teenya Franklin: Yeah. That sounds good to me. So, on radio buttons, I want to show you something over here in the… in the…
And I wish I could expand this, but you can't make it any bigger, like, you can't…
pull this sidebar to make this bigger, which is really frustrating.
There's a little scroll bar down here where you can scroll.
a little bit to see it.
Um, so you see that it's got…
a group, right? These are radio buttons, and they're connected.
So, it already put those in.
Because I had my source file.
created properly. And with the thing with radio buttons is, I want to show you the properties.
So, the group name here is, do you primarily?, and it says select one. The thing about radio buttons…
that's different, is they're all gonna have
the same group name.
And the same tooltip, so that doesn't change, right?
So, that's fine on this one.
If you look at the options,
So you see, you can change it from circle…
or a square, whatever, whatever someone's used, right?
I always say it's good for him to use a circle for a radio button, but if they don't, you can choose it from your options in here.
Okay? And then…
your radio button choice…
is where… this is where you would…
add in, in this instance, you would actually put the same…
tool text, or the text
It's the same text that you have here.
or part of it, right?
So you don't… you don't necessarily have to put the whole thing.
So for this first one…
You'll notice it's already got that filled in because I created it properly.
Right, so I don't have to add anything in there.
And if I look in my fields, you can see that it's the same for all.
Right? It made it a circle, because it was a circle.
And then it added the options to my choices.
Now, if you're creating them by hand, you're going to have to go in there and do that.
yourself, right? But it already did it for me.
So that's really great, because my Bible was accessible.
Okay? So if I go down…
To the next one, here's the difference with checkboxes. Checkboxes, you can select more than one.
Right? So you actually have to change
the tooltips on these, right? So, you've got email listserv, I've got
four options here. How did you hear about this class? Select all of the applies. So somebody may have heard it.
about it from an email list server, or from a coworker or manager.
Or they saw it on a mobility website, or they saw it on a social media post, right?
So, you want them to select all that apply.
So, for the name…
In this instance, it's fine to have email list servers, but the tooltip would be…
You just add a couple of words,
select…
If…
And I'm struggling with words here, um…
from…
from email listserv, right? Now,
I don't want to type this over and over and over again, so I'm going to actually take the first 3 words that I just typed, and I'm gonna…
highlight it, and I'm gonna hit CTRL-C on my keyboard.
I'm going to move to my next
checkbox.
And I'm gonna go right in front, and I'm gonna hit CTRL-V.
Right? So, selected from coworker manager…
And then they want… you want them to select this one if they had it from the Knowbility website.
This one did funky, so this is why you always gotta check. This one actually took the text from the table below,
And put it as the name.
Right? So, I need to change the name to Other Source.
And then the tooltip…
Select it from another source.
Not listed.
And then… on the other, please specify, it's gonna say, other please specify, and I'm gonna say…
Enter source, right?
It could be whatever you want it to be, as long as it's contextual.
Okay? And then I'm gonna save.
Okay?
So, we're gonna move down to our tables.
So, in this one, I've made a couple complex… well, they're simple, but complex, because they have form fields in them.
So, I've got two… four text fields, and I've got two sets of radio buttons, and I can already tell that my tab order is correct.
So I just need to correct the…
Name and tooltip. So…
I don't need class row 1 in here, because it's in a table that's going to tell them.
It's the row. So, data, of course,
is fine.
For the name?
And the tooltip would be…
Let's get rid of that.
Enter…
date of… and here's the thing, because there are no
There's no 1, 2, 3, 4 in this table.
I always kind of view common sense, and… because I don't want the tooltips to be the same.
So I'm gonna put either enter data of first course,
or enter date of first course entered, right? Something like that, so that there's…
a delineation between
The tool… the tool tips for users, say that 5 times fast.
So you just kind of want to make sure that it's clear that they're at a different field.
Um, so I'm gonna put in her date of…
First course.
entered.
Right? And then I'm actually going to copy this.
And I'm going to go to the one right below it,
And this is going to be date of…
Again, you don't want your name to be the same, so I'm gonna be… I'm gonna put date of…
Second course?
As the name, so that future editors will know, okay, this one goes to that one, without having to click through everything, right?
And in the tooltip, it's going to be date of…
Second course entered.
Right? So just small things that can make things go a little bit faster.
Right? So…
I'm going to move to the next one.
It's just under course class name.
So, what I can do here…
is…
Copy the last 3 words from first course entered.
Come over here, and this is going to be…
First…
class name for the name.
Then here, I'm gonna put…
Enter the name…
Uh, first course entered.
And you could change entered at the end, and just…
kind of change it to listed, maybe?
Would sound better, so you're not hearing entered, entered over and over again.
And if I want to go back and change the other one, I could do the same thing here.
Because I don't have to close that box, right? It makes it easier to go back and forth.
And then, again, I can CTRL-C.
And I tab out so it saves it.
Come over here, I want to make that small, slight change, because I know it just sounds better, and I want to do it before I forget.
So, then we can come to…
This one here…
This would be…
Second class name…
for the field title, or name, I mean?
And then I don't want to retype everything, so I'm going to come over here,
Copy the first one.
Ctrl-V and change first to second.
Right? Tab out.
Okay, so now my radio buttons.
We have it undefined.
So, the name on this one would be…
And again, they're… they're gonna state again…
Together, so it's gonna be…
Of course.
completed.
Now, you notice…
When I did that,
my other one dropped out from underneath it, right?
in my… if you look in… in the…
the pain. It dropped out.
of my radio buttons.
So, all I have to do here to fix that…
is drag and drop it at.
And actually, it wants to be a pain, so I'm going to CTRL-Z, click on this one.
trophy, and now you can see that it's merged back together, and all I have to do is hit the tooltips.
Right, and on a radio button like this, where it's yes or no,
One tool tip, because it goes… applies to both.
Select the correct…
response.
Because it applies to both.
Right, and it automatically changes.
Because you can see, when I go from yes,
select the correct response, and I go to no.
Select the correct correspondence, right?
And on this one, I would actually…
change the name on this?
to the first…
course completed.
Because we have two listed here, right? So that means when I go to the next one, I can fix the next one.
Now, here's another cool little tip.
In your pain, your form field's pain,
Where I have undefined 4. That's the second set of radio buttons.
You can actually open this,
and right-click, or double-click in here,
I don't know if you can see the change, but when I double-click in…
Where it says Undefined 4,
I can change it here, and say…
Second class.
Completed.
Right? And it changes it for me.
So I don't have to go inside each one.
Right? I just have to go…
and do the tooltip, right? So, select…
Now, my option here, it says yes to.
We want to get rid of the 2. It says yes to because it has another yes up here.
You want to get rid of that, too.
The same thing for the no.
You want to get rid of the 2, because when we add it to the tags, it'll apply to the proper
So, right? So you just want to make sure you don't have that.
Why did it do that?
There we go.
And I'm gonna save.
Okay, moving down…
to the next page.
These are check boxes, so they're going to be individual, right? So the name on this…
Again, was…
You're gonna look at your… sometimes you gotta look at the text.
like, in the question, to determine
kind of what the name should be, right? So…
I would, for this one, I would put…
feedback provided.
And this would be… the tooltip here would be selective yes.
And on this one…
Because we've got two,
We've got a yes and a no, which these should have been… could have been radio buttons as well, but I wanted to do this to show you as an example of what sometimes people do. They don't always use radio buttons when they should. They don't always use checkboxes when they should, but there's a way to work around it so you don't have to redo the whole document.
Right? So in this, I'm going to put
Feedback provided, yes, is the name.
The tilt appears, select if yes.
Right? You could change it to select if feedback…
was provided.
And then I'm gonna actually copy that.
Go to the know, and I'm going to change this to Feedback.
With a name.
And make it feedback not.
Provided.
I'm gonna select if feedback was…
not provided, right?
And then comments…
So the name on this would be Feedback…
Actually, for this, it would be question one comments.
Because it's on question 1 in the table, and if you tag it as a list as well, it's going to tag Tie to…
to number one, right? You could either do question one, comments, or item 1 comments.
whatever you need.
And then you could put enter comments…
About…
feedback. Any comments they have? Again, I received this as a sample, so I went ahead and put it in here.
Um, not the best design and layout, but…
It happens. Okay, so you're just gonna repeat the same thing for the next one.
So…
For the name on this, feedback…
Provided…
None. That's good enough.
Tooltip…
select if…
So this is where you look at the…
text, so it says, if feedback provided was none or something similar, has the training been revised since the feedback was provided, right?
So I'm going to say select if…
training revised.
Right, because that's on the yes.
I'm gonna copy this…
And go to this one…
Feedback provided.
I'm gonna put similar on this, because it's just a name.
No one's gonna see that but the author.
And I'm gonna put… select… if training revised, then I'm actually going to put the word not.
In between.
I'm gonna tab out. Okay, so now we've got them all labeled.
We've got them all in there. Now, we need to see if they're in the tags.
You know, I have a feeling they're not.
So, before I go and start…
Because I can tell they're not, because there's no OBGR, and we can do that.
But there's a couple of tricky things, and we're not going to get through the whole thing, I don't think, but I'm willing to go through them.
But one of the first things that you want to do before you start adding in your annotations or…
form fields if they didn't automatically add in, which for some reason mine didn't.
I don't ask myself why Acrobat does things anymore. I just don't.
because I had tag annotations selected.
didn't do it. So I want to check my reading order.
And make sure that everything is in the right order before I start adding in fields, because if it's not
you're gonna have to go change things. And as you can see from this
document. These are not in the right order.
Right, I go from 1, 2, 3, 4, and then 2.
13, 14, 15, 16, 17.
Right? So you… you can see they're in there.
But they're not in the right order, right?
So it did put them in, it's just…
don't know where they put them.
So… and I have a feeling that because I had my table selected,
It put it all at the bottom.
And this is where it gets tricky.
So, it's not in the tech, it's not in the tags, because if I expand them all…
Ah! There they are.
That's a link.
Oh, look at that. So that's one of the things. That's why you don't see them when they're supposed to, because when I actually started adding in my form fields,
I had the table selected.
So, I need to move them all.
Right? Which is not that hard to do.
So for right now, I will show you how I would fix this. I would grab them all.
And I'm going to take them and put them all over the top.
I'm gonna drop them right here so that I see them all.
Because then it's easier to move, right?
So, you want to make sure…
that your label…
And your OBGR tag. The OBGR tag is what makes it an actionable link.
Which tells assistive technology that this is something that you can interact with.
So I'm gonna drag Name in.
Pull down Email.
Now, to keep track, you don't have to keep them all at the top.
You can select them all.
And move down as you work.
the better way to have done this was to be not to have a tag selected.
Um, but this actually gives you a good idea of what's going to happen if you go to prepare for them and you've got a specific tag selected, that's where it's going to put them all.
Right? So…
If I move phone number first 3 digits down…
Actually, I want to try a trick real quick.
I'm gonna show you guys something.
So…
I want to go back into prepare form.
And I'm going to minimize this.
The first thing I'm gonna do real quick is… and don't scream.
Okay, I'm gonna delete all my OBGR tags, because I want you guys to see something.
Okay, I'm gonna save.
Chess gonna get off of the tags real quick.
Just go to my content, make sure I'm not on the tags.
So, I'm gonna try something.
I'm going to hit CTRL-A with my prepare form open.
And you see how it's selected all of them?
Now I'm gonna CTRL-X,
or cut them off.
That's not gonna let me, I'll have to do it page by page.
I grab all those.
I'm gonna cut…
And then…
I'm going to paste them all right back in.
I want to look at my tags.
And I think it did the same thing.
It did.
Well, let me save.
Well, I didn't add them in, but we can add them in.
So we'll just start from here. So, say your form fields are not in, there's an easy way to add them in.
It does… there is an annoying feature in Acrobat, which is…
Frustrating, you can go to Find.
Make sure you're on the right P tag.
unmarked annotations, fine. Tag element.
Unfortunately, they haven't made this…
Where you can continue going, right? It just…
You have to click Find Next.
Oh, they did fix it. Tag element.
If you click on Search Document,
your Find Next will come up.
You can go find next, tag element. In this case, we want all three tagged together, so I found number P tag.
You may have to reorder them.
Okay, so now they're all in. You got phone number, area code, first 3, and last 4.
So this form field needs to be tagged with this
this multi-line text.
Gonna go here…
This is another reason to make sure you're
your form fields are in the proper tab order, because you notice it's going to put them where it's supposed to.
tag element. And it's actually pretty quick.
Okay. So that…
page is tagged.
Now, the one last step that I always take that is above and beyond, you don't have to do this to make it past the Acrobat Checker, but
for PAC purposes, or for PDFUA.
It's always helpful to come in here and change these to a form tag, and you can do that all in one time. So you're going to highlight your P tag, your first one, you're going to hit CTRL.
And for every one that you want to change to a form,
You're just gonna highlight them.
And then in one fell swoop, you're gonna right-click,
on the tag, you're gonna go to Properties.
And you're going to change it from paragraph…
to form.
So now they're all identified as form fields. The label with the form.
Okay? So I'm gonna move on.
And on this one, you want to make sure that you're grabbing the actual
proper spot to put it on.
So this first one here…
I'm gonna grab the first one.
Okay, so now we have all our OBDRs. Now, here's the difference.
In these. If you notice above,
My OBGR is below the text.
Right? Which, you want to hear the text before the OBGR, but depending on where you have your cursor,
When you pop your OBGR in, it could come above or below.
On this one, I happened to hit the tag instead of the container.
So I put my OBGR above it.
Easy way to fix that is just grab it and drop it underneath.
Making sure it stays nested.
Okay? So I'm going to move on down to my checkboxes.
And to get this to ungray, I'm going to hit Search Page.
Find next, tag element.
And again, it put it above, because I didn't have it in the right spot.
So on this one, I'm gonna make sure I grab the container.
Search document…
by next, tag element, and this way you notice that it's in the proper place. So, if you hit the
The tag, it's gonna put the OBGR above the text.
You hit the container, it'll put it below it.
So I'm gonna go to the next one.
Get it to ungray out.
I'm gonna hit search page. So, if you switch back and forth on these, it'll ungray, and you won't have to close and open it all the time.
Find next, tag element.
other. Swap back…
Find next.
search page, find next.
So in this instance, I wanted to… I noticed that when I hit search document,
It was on 5.
And these are actually in the wrong order.
So what I want to do here, real quick, before I…
Tag that, is I want to come here…
Back over to my prepare form.
And I want to find these…
checkboxes.
And if you notice here, in my pane, they're out of order.
So, other source should come first. This should be 5, this should be 6.
So all I need to do, really, is…
Drag that up.
and move it, and now it's in the right order, so that when I put it in my tags, it's not going to mess it up.
So here…
This other, please specify,
You've got your other source, which is your checkbox.
And then right after that,
You want to add in your
Please specify text field.
That's odd. I must have a line I didn't background.
Give me a second. Page 2…
Father, please specify…
Oh, we're good.
Huh?
Y'all see that?
They're still a line there.
Show and Content Panel, and there it is.
Uh, and it's nested in, so sometimes you have to go look.
pull stuff out.
and then artifact it.
We'll figure that anomaly later.
Don't have time to do that right now.
Okay, so when you get into your tables,
It's gonna be a little difficult. You're going to go into your table, you're gonna click on your table header cell, because…
You have your table header, but this is a table row.
Got a title table. This should actually be a data table data cell.
So I want to change that to a data cell.
Hit Search Page.
My next…
Apparently, I didn't clean these out.
Okay, well, since I didn't clean them out, you're gonna follow the same path, but you're gonna go through your table data cells. I would need to go clean this up real quick.
Because I didn't background the grids.
So it's not seeing everything that I need it to.
Marked annotations, and let's try that.
Oh. I just found my air.
I don't know if any of you saw that, but I had…
find artifacts instead of annotations selected.
Okay, that fixed that one.
And now my Tat Dable cell has the first one in.
Gonna move to the next data cell.
Gonna flip back and forth.
to search document in the search page, find next, you see it highlighted the next
appropriate one. Tag element.
And it drops it in where it belongs.
Okay, on this one where you have the P tags, you don't need these P tags on tables, it's… it kind of makes it messy, so…
You can get rid of the pay tags, you can…
Well, let me CTRL-Z that.
Just gonna leave it there, because it doesn't hurt anything, but…
Search document, search page, find next, tag element.
Same with this one.
And as you see, they go in exactly where they're supposed to go.
Again, in the next row.
Should not be a table header cell, it should be a data cell.
Make sure it's clicked.
Search page, find next, tag element.
So the easiest way is if this thing would have done what it should have… would have… if I wouldn't have had my tags selected, and they would have gone in, but now you can see that there's a way to add them in, even if…
It doesn't automatically.
add it in for you.
I'm gonna do the same here.
Okay, that page is done.
Now we're going to move to our next page.
In our next table.
And in this instance, it's a little different, right? We have a list.
And a list item.
Which is fine.
I also have an MTP tag, which needs to go away.
Okay, so table data cell…
This empty figure tag needs to go away.
But he figured tag needs to go away?
To paragraph tag needs to go away, so here's the yes.
And when I hit my find…
Make sure I change this to unmarked annotations.
I'm gonna tag it, go to the next cell…
swap back and forth again.
Tag that one, open up my next data cell, which, of course, this is a…
MT1. But it's a comment, so…
Find next, it grabs the comment.
Tag the element, and now comments are in there.
I'm gonna do the same thing for the next row.
Those empty figure tags are from when I artifacted the squares behind the checkboxes.
Delete that, and I'm gonna click Save. I'm still some errors.
Because I haven't gone through the entire document for accessibility.
But…
They are all in now, and if I go here…
Let me close that, run my accessibility check…
You can see that we have no errors on forms, right?
Uh, tab order failed because I did not go to the thumbnails.
If your tab order fails, go to your thumbnails.
Grab the first one, hit CTRL-A.
Go to page properties, choose Document Structure, click OK.
Save, go back…
Check again. Now it passed.
Okay. So with that, I'm going to…
Oh? Did I lose the zoom?
Mark Boyden: No? You're still here. You're still here.
Teenya Franklin: Hello? Oh, there it is.
Okay, so does anybody have any questions so far?
I hope I was still sharing screen that whole time.
Mark Boyden: You are…
Teenya Franklin: Oh, thank God.
Mark Boyden: You still are.
Teenya Franklin: Okay, good. So, let's see what you got here in questions. I know this ran over, y'all.
Uh, let's see what I have…
Mark Boyden: There's a bunch in the chat, and I got two still in QA.
Teenya Franklin: So, Tina Advent said, can you create an… can you address creating a PDF using print-to-PDF? Okay, so when you go print to PDF,
You're gonna get an un… un…
unstructured…
PDF. It's gonna come across as an image.
Which means you'll have to auto-tag it.
Okay, Anita, when I use prepare forms, some fields are not automatically detected and tagged as form field.
Even though there is a visible blank space after the label, is there a recommended approach, best practice?
to ensure that all intended forum builds are correctly recognized and tagged.
So, for example, on my form,
But I could have done…
Because remember, these multi-line fields, it didn't recognize it because there was no indicator, like,
a line or a box.
So you can put an underline,
Like, I could have put an underline right here in the Word file.
And then it would have said, oh, there's supposed to be a form filled there, because Acrobat would have seen the space and the line.
Or you could put a box, right?
You could do that as well. And then that would… that will help those
things be picked up.
Whenever to you show how you added space in the Word document.
Yes, I can.
So, we go to our Word file,
So right here…
what I did…
is… in… in Word, you've got this…
paragraph spacing.
Here, right? But that's…
doesn't really do a whole bunch.
What you want to do is right-click,
Either before or after.
Like, either before the… before the text, the following text, or after. Now, the reason I didn't do following is that's my heading.
Those are headings. I don't want to mess with my headings.
layout. So if you want to add space after a specific line of text,
You're gonna put your cursor right after it.
The last… so, for here, it's the colon. I'm gonna right-click, and I'm gonna go to Paragraph.
And here I have it set to 108 point.
Right? Now, for someone who may come in here and want to edit it, they're going to need to know that, but for me,
I would rather create it excessively than having to go into PDF and find all those blank lines and artifact them.
Right, so this is how you do it.
Again, I'll show you again on the next one.
So, in here, I've got two columns.
And if I go to Layout,
columns, more columns, you can see that I have two columns.
of equal width.
Right? And it's applied just to this section.
And then I did the same thing with the paragraph spacing here.
So if I get a paragraph again…
You can see that I have it set to 90 point.
And it's going to be equal with this one, because they're column width.
So, 90 and 90.
So that's how you set that, when you give those empty spaces.
Um, do you offer a course on… I do.
I do offer a course on creating Word documents.
It's actually not just using themes, it's, um…
It's creating accessible Word documents, and it includes how to use styles and fonts and…
Which fonts are recommended sans-serif and which fonts are not recommended.
I absolutely have those courses.
Um, and I often get
document that another person has created in a Word file, and it needs to be fixed, absolutely.
Hmm…
The entire table with yes or no's was crossed out with an X before you starting. Okay, so the X in a PDF
You will notice an X, so let me pull up my reading order tool real quick.
So you're going to notice an X on a couple of things here.
Figures are going to have an X across it, it just means that that's the entire figure, right? Same thing with the table.
All the X does is indicate to you
that this is the entirety of the table. It's not a don't do this, and it's a…
I don't… I don't like the way they do it, but it just… that's Acrobat's way of telling you,
what content
your table spans.
And if I uncheck this little button, Show Tables and Figures,
it goes away. Then when it comes important is when you want to get to this table editor that's grayed out, in order to get to that,
You actually have to come in.
have this show tables and figures selected, and actually come into the first content, and I don't know if you can see how my cursor changes to a hand.
But when that happens, you can click on that,
In this table editor, ungraze out.
You click on Table Editor,
then you can come in here, and I can do it all at once, these first three.
our table headers, or column headers, right? So I want to go to table cell properties, their header cell, and the scope is column.
Right? And that fixes that. So that's why those… that's why that's there.
It's not anything you did wrong.
It's just their way of showing you where there's a figure or a table.
Let's see…
Okay, were there any other questions?
Mark Boyden: Yes, let's see. When I use… Anita asks, when I use PrepareForm, some fields are not automatically detected and tagged as farm fields
Teenya Franklin: I answered that one.
Even though there is a visit… oh, okay.
that's the one where I talked about where you can put a box
like a text box in with a border, but…
Mark Boyden: That's right, I'm sorry, she put it both in chat and Q&A.
Um, and there was a question about, uh, if you've…
Okay.
Uh, that you may have already mentioned. Why were you artifacting in the content panel?
rather than the tags panel.
Teenya Franklin: Okay, so I'm gonna break my PDF to show you why.
So, just to show you why…
So, for example,
We're just gonna use this right here, this header.
Right here, right? If I grab this,
And I use the reading order tool until it…
First of all, let me show you my reading order.
For page 2, right?
So you have your reading order here, right? And here it is in the order.
Right? And everything else that I've artifacted is gone.
Right? And then the numbers on the page, you don't see numbers on the page where they are, right?
But if I take this,
And I tell it to background artifact it,
Still stays in my reading order.
Now, if I change this from page contact order to structure types,
And I save…
Uh, I didn't take it out of the sections. Let me go to the content panel. There's a little bit more work to do on this one, but I want to show you what I'm talking about.
So, you see how it's an artifact?
It remains in your reading order?
That's why. Because I don't like that.
So let me close this and reopen it so it doesn't mess up my PDF.
Because y'all don't want to mess that PDF back.
So, let me try a…
Oh, I don't know why that's at 243%, but wow.
The same way I showed you in Tags panel to show in Content Panel, you can do the same thing vice versa. If you're in your Content Panel, you can go Show and Tags panel.
This is not a span, it's a heading.
Okay, so there's… can we get more ender?
So, um, I don't know that we have currently any word
Um, scheduled. However, we do have access U coming up, where there will be lots and lots of classes on document accessibility, PDF, Word,
Um, and other various ones. I also, um, if you contact me, um,
We do offer… I do offer one-on-one training.
Depending on the topic and cost, just reach out to me, and I can get you some quotes on how much it would cost to meet with me one-on-one.
Um, to do, kind of,
hour-long sessions back, you know, over a span of time to learn things. I do those as well.
There is often debate about checking readering order only in the tag tree versus checking the order panel.
is both… is best practice to ensure both are aligned since different assistive technologies rely on different structures since reflow follows the order panel? Yes.
Your tags panel, your tags tree,
should match your reading order.
And so, one of the easiest ways to check that
Sorry, y'all, let me get that out of my way.
Um, am I still sharing my screen?
Mark Boyden: Yes.
Teenya Franklin: Okay, so one of the easiest ways to check that is to have your accessibility rating order open.
And you're gonna have it show your page content order.
then all you have to do is…
Watch your highlights.
Go through your tags, and walk your tags. So I clicked the first tag, highlight it, and then I use my arrow keys to go down.
And if you go in down, and…
Your second tag matches the number 2, your third tag matches the number 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Form fields are going to come together.
Right? Because they belong together, bound together.
So they're in the right order, that's an easy way to tell if they're both in the right order.
Right? And that's a really fast, easy way to do it visually, because you can keep your eye…
If you have good peripheral vision, you can keep your left eye on the PAGS panel and your right eye on the page, and watch that highlight.
As it moves. And then you can check both of them at the same time.
Absolutely, they should both match.
Without a doubt.
Okay. Another question?
Um, sometimes the order and prepare form is out of order, however.
The tag order is in the correct… yes, you still need to prepare the… fix the prepare form order, because that is the tab order of your form fields.
Absolutely. So, in the case of form fields, you want to make sure that your tags pane
your rating order and your tab order in the prepare form all match. In fact, I would do the prepare form first when you're doing that, to make sure
that they're in the right order, because if they're not, and you go to move them,
It's gonna break your tag structure, and you have to redo the whole thing.
do it all again, and I've had that happen many times.
It's very frustrating.
I hope this did y'all some good.
Y'all can feel free to come off of mute.
If you want to.
Mark Boyden: Thank you so much, Teenya. This was an excellent presentation. There's a lot in there to build on, but you've gone through pretty much every form field and type of, uh,
Most situations, I think people are going to go through, and they'll be able to
Rewatch this video and the various parts, um, as they go through working on their form and or reach out.
We do appreciate you providing any feedback about this program.
what you liked, what you felt we could have done better on, and um…
Any other topics that you might like us to do in the future?
So, uh, we make those decisions based on y'all's feedback, so please do give us the feedback.
Certainly subscribe to our newsletter if you'd like, and we hope to see you again at another one of these.
We will be sending out a recording early next week after we've got that and these materials together, and we will provide them together as a package for y'all.
Thanks again, and you guys take care.
Teenya Franklin: Thanks, ya'll