Re: Paper forms and WCAG 2

Jonathan Avila wrote:

> Does this fall into a policy decision that is outside of WCAG 2 or does 
> WCAG 2 address this.   I know there are other laws that would cover 
> this, but I’m specifically asking about WCAG 2 guidelines in this case.

It's likely to be a legal decision, rather than a policy.  You may be 
legally required to provide alternative means of submitting the 
information on the form.

I'm not familiar enough with WCAG2, although I have some reservations 
that the balance between document consumer and document designer has 
shifted in favour of the designer.  However WCAG1 said use W3C 
technologies, where available, so PDF would have been out.  (Actually, I 
think manually tagged PDF is more likely to be accessible than 
commercial HTML, as PDF starts on the basis that it is presentational, 
so the structuring has to be explicitly added.  Automatically tagged PDF 
doesn't count, as many Word documents are not properly structured.)

I assume the organisation has no problems when the user prints the 
document as reflowed Braille and completes it with a Braille printer?

One PDF feature that is severely under-used is PDF Forms.  It should be 
possible to complete the form electronically, then print the completed 
form.  Although I don't have any particular disabilities in this area, I 
would have liked the UK tax forms to have been done that way, given that 
I always seem to have something that doesn't allow me to make an online 
submission without buying commercial software.
-- 
David Woolley
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RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
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Received on Friday, 3 April 2009 07:48:04 UTC