How to Update Tooltips in a PDF

Welcome to today’s blog post. We’re discussing the importance of adding unique tooltips to PDF form fields with the same name. This boosts the accessibility of a PDF.

Video Guide

Why Unique Tooltips?

When PDF form fields share names, it’s confusing. Screen readers struggle. Users find it hard to know what each field is for. Setting unique tooltips solves this.

Steps to Update Tooltips

  1. Open File: Go to ‘Prepare a Form’. Select your file. Select ‘Create’.
  2. Check Existing Tooltips: Right-click the name fields and select properties. Look under ‘General’. Note existing tooltips.
  3. Make Tooltips Unique: Change ‘Name’ to ‘Applicant 1 Name’ for the first field. Change ‘Email’ to ‘Applicant 1 Email’ for the second field. Do the same for all the others.
  4. Repeat for All Fields: Email, address, etc., should also have unique tooltips.
Creating a unique tooltip for fields sharing the same name by specifying Applicant 1 Name

Adding Form Fields

Once tooltips are set, focus on organizing and correcting all your form fields.

  1. Find Unmarked Annotations: Open the ‘Accessibility Tags’ window. Click ‘Options’, choose ‘Find’ and search for ‘Unmarked Annotations’.
  2. Tag Form Elements: These will appear under a new section. Tag them.
  3. Add Placeholders: Create blank ‘p’ tags for each field. Move name, email, and address into these.
  4. Final Check: Run Jaws or any screen reader to ensure correct naming of all form fields.
Ensuring all form elements are tagged and moved to the correct place in a PDF

Result

After these steps, screen readers will identify each form field clearly. For example, ‘Applicant 1 Name’, ‘Applicant 2 Name’ and so on. This adds clarity for users.

Running a screen reader to ensure correct naming of all form fields

The Value of Unique Tooltips

Creating unique tooltips for each form field boosts user experience. They improve accessibility and help to make PDFs compliant with standards like PDF UA and Section 508. Remember, creating accessible documents is all in the details!

I can be your accessibility expert. For more detailed insights, tutorials, and in-depth discussions on accessibility and related topics, don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel: The Accessibility Guy on YouTube. Subscribe for regular updates!

More posts like this:

How to Resize a PDF

Welcome to today’s blog post, where we’re learning how to resize a PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro. Downsizing large PDFs saves disk space, bandwidth, and computer memory. It also allows…

How to Auto Tag PDFs for Accessibility

Welcome to the Accessibility Guy channel, where I strive to make the digital world more accessible to everyone. In today’s video, we will be discussing how to use the Auto Tag feature in Adobe Acrobat Pro to add tags to a PDF document quickly.

Video Overview | View on YouTube

Auto tagging is a feature within Adobe Acrobat Pro that applies a tag structure to your document, making it easier to navigate for users with disabilities. This feature is especially useful when working with documents that do not have any tags and require a structure that can be manipulated using the reading order tool or other accessibility features.

To use the Auto Tag feature, open your PDF document in Adobe Acrobat Pro and navigate to the Accessibility button from the tools menu on the right-hand side. At the very top of the menu, you will see the Auto Tag Document feature. Simply click on this button, and Adobe Acrobat will apply a tag structure to the rest of the file.

To view the tags that have been added, select the Tags panel from the left-hand menu, and expand the tags button. You can then expand some of the part tags to see the structure that has been added.

It is important to note that after using the Auto Tag feature or any other automated tagging features, it is essential to apply the rest of the accessibility features to the file. For more information on how to do this, check out some of my other videos, which I will link below.

My goal is to be your personal accessibility expert, and I am dedicated to making the digital world more accessible. So, hit that like and subscribe button for more accessibility best practices and tips.

In conclusion, the Auto Tag feature in Adobe Acrobat Pro is a quick and easy way to add tags to a PDF document, making it more accessible to users with disabilities. I hope you found this video helpful and informative. Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you in my next video.

Dont want to do the work?

Order 508 documents