Accessible documents and forms

The requirements of the BITV (BITV 2.0 and WCAG) also apply to documents, PDF files and forms and play a particularly important role in the public sector. In order to facilitate the implementation of digital accessibility in all areas, an overview and two handouts are provided below, which contain the most important points according to the WCAG standards and should be taken into account when creating accessible documents and forms.

These are in particular accessible Word and PDF documents. The PDF documents are part of the website and must be made available by the corresponding implementation deadlines also be made available in an accessible format. Exceptions are PDF documents that were created before September 2018: They do not have to be subsequently redesigned for accessibility unless they are necessary for active administrative procedures.

The 10 most important steps for creating documents are

• working with style sheets,
• Naming document properties ("File" then "Information" and then a document title, author or comment can be added to the file, for example),
• add alternative text to graphics,
• edit hyperlinks,
• preferably use black and white contrasts (images with a high contrast difference),
• Use fonts such as Arial,
• Indent with the tab key and create breaks with Ctrl+Enter,
• The correct document language (e.g. German) must be set,
• Check accessibility ("File" then "Check for problems" and then "Check accessibility"),
• possibly convert the document to PDF (for better presentation on the website).

Below is a checklist for the creation of accessible documents: Checklist_accessible_documents

As a rule, forms can be created in Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat DC. Therefore, the further information is based on the document "Checklist_accessible_documents". However, there are also forms that are integrated directly into the website or have a different basis of origin. However, the same applies to all forms.

Forms are particularly accessible if:

• they are clearly structured and laid out.
• the form labeling indicates what input the user is expected to make.
• the texts and/or displays for the same functions do not vary within a website.
• mandatory fields and input fields with a predefined range of values are marked with text.
• there is no time limit for processing the form.
• each form can be fully operated with the keyboard.
• you have the opportunity to check the data entered before submitting the form.

Below is a checklist for accessible forms: Checklist_accessible_forms

To check the accessibility of PDF documents according to the Universal Accessibility Guidelines (UA for short, a sub-standard of the PDF standard ISO 32000-1), there is the free tool PAC3 Tool.