Creating Accessible PDF Forms
Despite the popularity of HTML-based web forms, fillable PDF forms are still quite common for certain applications. But adding accessibility to the job of making fillable form fields in a PDF can seem like an insurmountable task for some users. The problem stems from the fact that Adobe Acrobat doesn’t do anything to facilitate the process. If you’ve ever added form fields to an existing PDF file and ran the Acrobat Accessibility Checker, you were probably greeted with a slew of new errors that hadn’t existed prior to your adding the form fields. This can feel overwhelming, but I’m here to tell you that making accessible forms is not only possible, but once you have the knowledge, it’s not even that hard. So, let’s dive in and take a look at how to create accessible, fillable form fields using a couple of different approaches.
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Chad one of the biggest problems I am having right now with fillable forms is people trying to submit the form, or form data file. Many of the documents that I have created use one of a couple types of email links attached to a submit button. The problem comes when the form is being viewed in a browser like Chrome, or Firefox. When the user hits the button to submit nothing happens. Is there an easy fix to this?
I didn’t dive into the topic of form submission in the article but you’ve encountered a common limitation of the process. Opening the form in a web browser eliminates some of the form functionality because you’re leaving it up to the browser to do things correctly. You definitely need to open the form in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader for proper functionality. For this reason, I usually include instructions near the download link reminding people to right-click on the form and choose “save as” and then open it in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader to ensure the process is fluid and works correctly.