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Overview
All users at UTA can create accessible forms with InDesign and this information will empower you to do so.
EIR Electronic Accessibility is the training and compliance resource for accessibility at UTA. OLC Creative Services offers Self-Serve Courses to support primary training provided by EIR Electronic Accessibility. We cannot create accessible content or verify accessibility for groups outside our service area.
About this Course
Electronic forms are technical communication and user experience design.
The goal is to create a form that is easy for users to complete and clearly guides users to what they need to know, do, or the information they need to provide. A well-designed form eliminates the need for back-and-forth communication between the department gathering the information and the user completing the form.
Electronic forms are also interactive PDFs and must be accessible. Interactive PDFs support fillable fields, live hyperlinks, bookmarks, headings, et cetera. A thorough understanding of technical communication, user experience design, InDesign Accessibility, and Adobe Acrobat are required to create successful forms that function properly and gather information efficiently.
Adobe LiveCycle was discontinued in 2014, and InDesign is the replacement tool for designing forms. While it is possible to design forms using Microsoft Word, Word lacks the ability to associate form fields with the text they belong with – it cannot anchor fields to text as does InDesign. Word forms result in a lengthy and arduous process that requires a PDF Remediator. Word forms are also extremely difficult to update, as most of the form programming and remediation work are done in the PDF, and that work is lost when a new version of the PDF is exported from Word. For these reasons, it is highly recommended that all forms are created in InDesign.