Label every field in your PDF forms
Every field in a PDF form needs a visible label on the page and a matching tooltip, because the tooltip is the label that assistive technology is actually attached to. W3C names it plainly. The TU entry of the field dictionary is the programmatically associated label, and Acrobat Pro exposes it as the Tooltip box in field properties. W3C publishes PDF10 as a sufficient technique, and it asks for both halves. The visible label has to sit correctly beside its control, and the tooltip has to carry the same words. Without the tooltip, a field is just "edit text".
How we find it in an audit
We tab through the whole form with a screen reader and listen to what each field announces. Fields that speak only their type, or an internal name like "Text27", fail. Then we check the tooltips in Acrobat's field properties, because a screen reader test on its own is not proof. Assistive technology falls back on heuristics and will often read nearby page text when no programmatic label exists, so a form can sound labeled and carry no TU entry anywhere in it.
How affected users experience it
Tabbing into an unlabeled field, the user hears "edit text" and nothing more. On a tax or loan form with forty fields, they are left inferring each field's purpose from whatever text the reading order happens to put nearby. People fill in the wrong boxes on documents where wrong answers have consequences.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
Every field's tooltip matches its printed label, "Gross annual income in dollars", and the printed label sits directly above its box. A screen reader announces exactly that when the field takes focus.
Fails
A loan application's fields announce as "Text1" through "Text38". The borrower has to guess which edit box is income and which is existing debt.
How this gets tested
The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.
- ARIA attribute is defined in WAI-ARIAA tool can check this
- ARIA state or property has valid valueA tool can check this
- Element with role attribute has required states and propertiesA tool can check this
- Form field has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
- Headers attribute specified on a cell refers to cells in the same table elementA tool can check this
- Role attribute has valid valueA tool can check this
- ARIA global properties not used where prohibitedA tool can check this
- ARIA required context roleA tool can check this
- ARIA required owned elementsA tool can check this
- ARIA state or property is permittedA tool can check this
- Table header cell has assigned cellsA tool can check this
- Image button has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
- Link has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
- Button has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
- Element with aria-hidden has no content in sequential focus navigationA tool can check this
- Element with presentational children has no focusable contentA tool can check this
- Menuitem has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
- Summary element has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
- Iframe element has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
- Iframe elements with identical accessible names have equivalent purposeA tool finds candidates, you decide
Other ways to satisfy this rule
52 guides on this site are filed under 1.3.1 Info and Relationships. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule when used for making information and relationships conveyed through presentation programmatically determinable, so the condition is part of the test rather than a footnote to it.
- ARIA11sufficientAdd landmarks so users can skip around
- ARIA12sufficientUse role=heading when h1-h6 is impossible
- ARIA13sufficientName repeated landmarks so they are distinguishable
- ARIA16sufficientName controls from visible text with aria-labelledby
- ARIA17sufficientGroup related form fields with ARIA roles
- ARIA20sufficientMark leftover page areas with role=region
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique PDF10: Providing labels for interactive form controls in PDF documents. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.