Gene,
You do have a tendency to be rather blunt, but your response to me was
no more than usual, and I didn't take any offense. To answer your
questions, I guess I should have been a little clearer in my original
post. I can in fact move through the form using my arrow keys, but I
cannot tab through the form. I think I've seen websites like the ones
you are referring to, but I don't think that's what we're dealing with
here. I downloaded a completely unrelated form a couple months back
and it acts the same way. I just opened a third form that I was able
to fill out when I needed it, but I was using System Access at the
time and it acts as the other two forms do when viewed with NVDA. So,
unless there's a hidden trick when completing PDFs that nobody knows
about, I don't think this is a problem with the file itself, but
rather one with the way NVDA interacts with Adobe Reader.
I wasn't quite sure what to think about the lack of response to this
question, but I do find it hard to believe that out of the probably
hundreds if not at least dozens of people on this list, nobody would
know the answer. Surely there would be someone on this list who has
encountered a fillable PDF and has filled it out using NVDA and could
give me some tips.

On 5/17/22, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I'm not writing as I am to give you a hard time and I hope you don't
consider my direct writing to be other than my attempt to make the
following points strongly and clearly.

You say you can't move through the form and you say it is done
properly.  You don't know if it is done properly.  If you can't move
through it, maybe it isn't.

You are assuming that just because a field your screen-reader sees as
edit is available, that it can be filled in and is accessible. Just
because a car has a motor, does it run?  What if the car is out of gas
or the motor is damaged?

There are uncommon web sites where links aren't properly defined for
accessibility and they can't be clicked on by the keyboard.  They look
accessible and the screen-reader announces them as links but some links
require the mouse to be used.  This appears to be a choice a web
designer makes and it isn't the way links function unless the designer
specifies this.  That's very fortunate for us.

Things aren't necessarily as the screen-reader indicates in terms of
accessibility.  There are some things it doesn't know about and perhaps
can't be aware of.

You have gotten another question answered.  Why would people be ignoring
this one?  Maybe people don't know the answer.

If you want others to try working with the form to see if they have the
same problems and can figure a way around them, if the form is one you
don't object to sharing, asking for volunteers may result in people
asking to be sent copy.

You are working with browse mode.  As far as I know, in a properly
designed PDF document, you should be able to move and edit is though you
were working with a web page.

Gene
On 5/17/2022 11:17 PM, Bob Cavanaugh wrote:

Hi all,
This will be the last time I ask this. I find it hard to believe
nobody on here knows the answer to what seems like a fairly easy
problem to fix, but I've asked this twice since Thursday, and have
gotten nowhere, when every other question on this list including my
other one has had an answer within a couple of hours. Yes I could ask
for sighted help and probably will if I don't get an answer, but this
form was done correctly, unlike lots of PDFs I've seen, so I should be
able to fill it out without sighted help.
I'm using the latest version of NVDA and Adobe Reader. NVDA will see
that edit fields in the PDF exist, but I'm having the following
issues:
1. I cannot tab through them like I would a form on a webpage.
2. Pressing enter when focused on an edit field does not activate
focus mode as it would on a webpage.
3. Manually activating focus mode with control+space works, but does
not appear to actually fill in the forms as would be expected. How
does this work?
Bob

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