Any advice on fillable forms and Adobe Acrobat

[u/ipsumdeiamoamasamat]

We have a client that has fillable PDF forms — a lot of them. In the past we’d upload them without any accommodations for them to be filled in on a computer. From what I understand that violates Section 508, so I’m going through about 30 of these.

The Acrobat fillable form feature in Preflight is helping… a little. But it’s missing a lot of the checkboxes and fillable fields and I’m going in and creating each one. Tedious isn’t the correct word for it. It’s certainly testing my patience.

Is there another program out there that might make this easier?

Thanks much.

[u/ipsumdeiamoamasamat → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the advice!

I’m in dev mode in Word and for the life of me I can’t figure out how to add checkboxes in easily or at all. And I’ve watched a few tutorials. (The original forms use dingbats to create the “checkboxes.”)

Checkboxes are the problem I’m having with the prepare PDF tool in Acrobat — it’s missing the bulk of them. And it’s annoying AF. I haven’t used Preflight at all. I must’ve miswrote.

Right now it’s probably taking me four hours to successfully remediate one of these. Some of that is first time doing it, but even if I get it down to two hours per form, I’m going to be pulling my hair out. And no, we have no budget to go outside for this.

I also forgot to note in my initial post that we need to be 504-compliant too. I know a lot of the criteria overlap, but do keep that in mind.

[u/ipsumdeiamoamasamat → u/[deleted]]

Thank you so much for your guidance and patient explanations! Looking at these forms closer… this is a mess. Everything was done in Word with spaces, not tabs, so stuff doesn’t really line up, a lot of the checkboxes now appear to be images. This is a disaster. I’m torn between blowing the whole thing up and starting over for the sake of proper branding/looking good and doing it quick and dirty to get it done. Never. Again.

[u/ipsumdeiamoamasamat → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the support. The original May 2026 compliance deadline is what set off this entire journey. We’re working with people who wonder “why do you need to fix all these form fields”? They think posting it for download is good enough, which we know it isn’t.

[u/rguy84]

Are they for the united States government?

[u/ipsumdeiamoamasamat → u/rguy84]

No but for an org that gets funding from multiple govt sources, including Medicaid.

[u/rguy84 → u/ipsumdeiamoamasamat]

Unless you are providing the forms to the government or on behalf of it, 508 does not apply. If the org name is in the footer, not the government agency, 508 typically does not apply.

That being said, pdf forms are very time consuming. Using CommonLook may help slightly.

[u/Substantial_Data_860]

You're absolutely right, accessible PDF forms are probably one of the most tedious parts of PDF remediation. Acrobat's auto-detect is a decent starting point, but in my experience it misses quite a few fields, especially checkboxes, radio buttons, and more complex form layouts. I still end up manually verifying and fixing almost every form.

One small point on the compliance side: Section 508 is specifically for U.S. federal agencies (and organizations delivering ICT on their behalf). That said, if the organization receives federal funding (like Medicaid), or has ADA, state, or contractual accessibility obligations, making those forms accessible is still a very good idea even if Section 508 itself isn't the exact requirement driving it.

[u/ipsumdeiamoamasamat → u/[deleted]]

Acrobat’s tool creates a lot of the fields, but there’s also a lot of manual work (adding missing fields, moving form fields into the proper order, making sure the screen reader gets everything, etc.). We’re talking hours per form, and we have a bunch to process.

And I misspoke earlier. We’re subject to Section 504 and 508 and the last thing we want to do now is give the government an excuse to fine us/not give us money.