What is a Properly Tagged Form (Desktop and Advanced Editor)

Modified on Wed, 10 Jun at 5:25 PM

Overview

A Form tag in a PDF is a structural tag used to identify an interactive form control that a user can interact with, such as entering information, making selections, or activating a button.

Examples of Form Elements

Text input fields
Checkboxes
Radio buttons
Combo boxes (drop-down lists)
List boxes
Push buttons (Submit, Reset, Print, etc.)
Digital signature fields

In the tags tree, the form elements will appear as form annotations (the interactive part of the Form) and need to be placed inside of a Form tag.

Most Form Tags contain two elements:

The text (as shown in the physical view)
The form Annotation.

What a Form Tag Does

The Form tag tells assistive technologies:

This is an interactive control.
The control has a specific role (text field, checkbox, button, etc.).
The control has a name or label.
The control may have a current value or state.

Prerequisites

All Form annotations in a PDF are required to be tagged in a Form tag and given a ToolTip

Steps to Follow

Stand-Alone and Grouped Forms are tagged differently:

Stand-Alone Form

Screenshot showing three questions - one for Name, one for Date, and one for Favorite Color.

This scenario contains three questions that are independent of each other. Because these questions don't contextually rely on each other, we can confidently classify them as "stand-alone" forms. As a result, each form will go in its own respective paragraph tag.

Grouped Forms

Screenshot showing a Home Address section of questions including four Forms - one for Street/Number, one for City, one for State, and one for Zip code.

This scenario contains four questions that are related to each other. Because these questions contextually rely on each other and provide the full information only when offered collectively, we can confidently classify them as "grouped" forms. As a result, all four of the related forms will go inside of one paragraph tag.

Tags tree showing four Form tags inside of a single Paragraph tag, accompanied by a text element that reads "Home Address."

Screenshots

Below is a screenshot of a properly structured Form Tag with the Annotation and the text inside

Form tags will always be placed inside a structural tag and never at the root level on the Tags tree.

A properly structured Form tag containing the Annotation and the text.

Common Problems

Decorative Content Should Not Be Tagged as Form Elements. Examples that should not be form tags:

Decorative boxes
Underlines used to simulate forms

Frequently Asked Questions

What if there is no text associated with a form field? How should the Form be tagged?

In this case, the Form tag will only contain the Annotation. The following are two examples in which this may occur:

If a question is a checkbox for “Other” with the instructions to “provide specific information below,” it may be followed by a blank text field in which the user can provide necessary details.
There is a data table where the text for the "questions" is in the column and/or row header cells and the data cells, in the "body" of the table, only contain the form annotations.

What if the forms are inside of a table that really isn't a data table?

If a table was used to format the form section of a document, in addition to linearizing the table, artifact the lines so that they are not also placed in the Form tags.

How to Create Properly Tagged Forms (Advanced editor)

How to Create Properly Tagged Forms (Desktop)