AEM forms to Acrobat - links in field captions are skipped in tab order | Community
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C
CØK
Level 4
March 6, 2025

AEM forms to Acrobat - links in field captions are skipped in tab order

  • March 6, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1018 views

Morning -

Creating forms in AEM Designer 6.5.21, saving as static forms extended for Reader.

When opening the form in Acrobat links in Text objects are fine and appear in tab order, whereas links in a field caption do not. In other words, Acrobat does not tab to an inline link in a field cation.

When using JAWS on the attached, the links in field captions are read with the full caption ("link. Checkbox with an inline link. link"), which means that the caption is now read three times. The button link is is read using the Custom Text.

Sooooo.....

Can we please have Acrobat tab to inline links in field captions?

And please don't tell me that I have to make button objects for every single link - here are SOME of the problems with that, all of them making forms production extremely inefficient:

  1. The button has to be placed with correct spacing on top of the caption 
  2. The caption will now read only the text in the caption and not the link text. This has to now be remediated:
    1. You can add the link test on the button to the caption in the blank space in white font
    2. You can set the Custom Text for the field to include the link text
    3. You can split it up to have "[text object] [link button] [rest of caption text as the caption] - which then of course also requires you to set the Custom Text for the field. And now you have to deal with three objects instead of one.
  3. You have to set the Custom Text for the button
  4. You have to do this for all fields on a form EVERY TIME the form is revised. We have app 1500 forms that are revised on a rolling basis to the tune of 200 multipage forms twice a year. You see the problem, no doubt.
  5. Buttons are not the best solution for accessibility. They are  intended for ACTIONS.

Not only is the button solution incredibly time consuming, it also creates a situation that exponentially increases the risk of human-introduced errors.

Is it truly impossible to have AEM generate tags for inline links so they are not treated as annotations when the form is opened in Reader/Acrobat?????

 

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2 replies

C
CØKAuthor
Level 4
March 7, 2025

One more problem with the inline links: If you hit Enter to open a link from a Text Object, when you go back to the PDF the tab order starts from scratch; when you hit Enter to open a button link, the tab order on the PDF picks up where you left off. Can you please fix the inline link issue or tell us what you plan to do?

As I said, the convention for buttons is that they are actions - Submit, Print, Save - so presenting links as buttons can cause confusion for the form user who is dependent on such conventions.

C
CØKAuthor
Level 4
March 14, 2025

There has been NO reply with an answer yet. I do not have an Admin account and cannot open tickets. 

K
koolForms
Level 3
March 14, 2025

Greetings,

I will speak plainly. 

Using links in captions is not best practice for forms design/development. If the link is to give the user extra information regarding what is to be entered into the field I would put that link somewhere other than the caption of the field. 

I would use a button or a separate static text object.

C
CØKAuthor
Level 4
March 17, 2025

I have a scenario - here's a checkbox:

[] I have provided notice in accordance with rule xyz.123,

where the rule is a link providing more information (i.e., the rule). The checkbox indicates an affirmation that is binding.

So, according to you, I would have to make a checkbox that says

[] I have provided notice in accordance with rule

followed by

a button or text object with link xyz.123, aligned perfectly with the checkbox.

For accessibility compliance, the reader text for the checkbox cannot be the Caption, is has to now be Custom text:

"I have provided notice in accordance with rule xyz.123"

Is that correctly understood?

In isolation, not too much of a bother, but at scale this becomes magnificently inefficient. 

 

As to my second question about the tab order starting over in Acrobat with inline links - any suggestions there?

K
koolForms
Level 3
March 17, 2025

I believe you have what I was thinking correct.

I do not use Caption or Custom Text. I always use Tool Tip. Though Custom Text should work just as well.

So you could put a button to open a URL but you could also use another static text object and add the hyperlink. I think that still opens you up to missing the hyperlink. That is why using an object that participates in the tab order seems to work better as the cursor is forced to stop there.

 

The issue with embedded hyperlinks being missed, not being read by screen readers, and totally screwing up your tab order has been reported to Adobe. So far no fix has been applied. So we have to work with work-arounds for now.

 

Regards,

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