Matterhorn 11-005 · PDF/UA-1 UA1:7.2-3
Form field tooltips with no language to read them in
Form field tooltips are the accessible name of the field and need a determinable language.
The condition, as the protocol states it. “Natural language in the TU entry for form fields cannot be determined.”
Matterhorn Protocol 1.1, checkpoint 11, index 11-005, section UA1:7.2-3. Software can decide this one on its own.
What a screen reader actually does
Field labels are announced in the wrong voice.
What the condition is
An interactive form keeps its fields in the AcroForm dictionary, and each field can carry three names. Only one of them is for people:
12 0 obj
<< /FT /Tx
/T (dob) % internal name: form data, scripts
/TU (Date of birth) % user name: what assistive technology announces
/Rect [ 72 650 300 670 ]
/Subtype /Widget
>>
endobj/TU is the field’s accessible name. Like annotation /Contents and bookmark titles, it is text that is spoken but is not page content, and it has no language entry of its own. The dependable source for its language is the catalog’s /Lang, the document’s default, which is also the only one Taggart consults. When the document declares none, every field with a tooltip fails this condition.
What the user hears
Tabbing through a form, a screen reader announces the tooltip as the field’s name, along with what kind of field it is. With an undetermined language the tooltip is spoken in the default voice.
For an English form on an English machine nothing is audibly wrong. For a Hebrew form, the name is noise and the type is clear: the person knows they are in a text field and not which one. On a form that is the whole problem, because the tooltip is often the only instruction the field has. A date of birth typed into the box for an ID number is a form returned, or a benefit delayed.
Where it comes from
No document language at all. The plain case, shared with 11-001. A typical sequence: the source document was exported without a language, the fields were added afterwards in Acrobat, and adding fields does not add a language.
A form assembled from parts. Fields copied in from another form, or a form rebuilt over a new export, carry their tooltips with them; the language belongs to the new document’s catalog, which may be empty.
Generated tooltips. Tools that name fields automatically, from nearby text or from the field names, produce tooltips in bulk without asking about language.
How to check it free
Acrobat Pro. Document properties → Advanced → Reading Options → Language. Blank, on a form whose fields have tooltips, is this condition. To read a field’s tooltip, select a form tool, right-click the field, choose Properties, and look at Tooltip on the General tab.
veraPDF tests every form field that has a /TU for a determinable language.
Tab through it. Start a screen reader and tab from field to field. Each announcement should be a name you could act on, in a voice that can pronounce it.
How to fix it free, in Acrobat Pro
Set the document language. From Adobe’s guide to checking accessibility:
- The hamburger menu (Windows) or the File menu (macOS) → Properties → Advanced.
- Under Reading Options, choose the language from the Language list, or type its code if it is not listed.
- OK, and save.
Or from the Accessibility Checker: select Primary Language, choose Fix from the options menu, and pick the language in the Set Reading Language dialog.
While you are there, read the tooltips. The same Adobe page gives the route for editing one: select a form tool, right-click the field, Properties, General tab, Tooltip. A tooltip in a language other than the form’s will be read in the form’s voice once the language is set, which is the half of the problem this condition cannot see.
What Taggart does
Taggart walks the AcroForm field tree, and when the catalog /Lang is missing, or is not shaped like a BCP 47 tag, and at least one field has a /TU, it reports one blocker for the document. The finding counts the fields and gives the object number of the first:
1 form field(s) carry a /TU tooltip but the document has no valid /Lang, so their natural language cannot be determined.
The repair is document-language, which is not in Fix All Safe. In the app, ticking Set the document language shows the tag it will write, which starts as Taggart’s proposal: he-IL for Hebrew and ar for Arabic, from the letters; for text in Latin letters, the language its commonest words clearly point to — English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese or Polish. A page with too few words to tell gets en-US. Where the words point nowhere clearly, or the text is in another script, there is no proposal and the step asks you to type the tag. Where that is not the form’s language — a form has few words, and de-AT says more than de — type the right tag in the same repair step, or set the language in the program that made the form and export it again. The change log names the tag it wrote.
It writes the catalog /Lang and dc:language, and with them this finding and any of 11-001, 11-003, 11-004 and 11-006 from the same cause are gone.
Taggart can also fill missing tooltips, which is 28-005’s repair, from the tooltips you supply or, if you ask, from the fields’ own names: date_of_birth becomes “Date of birth”, and dob becomes “Dob”. Every tooltip made that way is marked in the change log as derived from the field name, for you to review. It is worth reviewing for language as well as wording. A name derived from an English field name is English, and in a Hebrew form 11-005 is satisfied by the Hebrew catalog language and has nothing more to say about it.
How Taggart handles it
Taggart checks for this condition automatically and reports it as a blocker, with where in the file it found it.
The fix is Set the document language. It changes what the document means, so Taggart proposes it and waits for your approval rather than applying it unattended.
Whatever Taggart changes, the page still looks identical. Fixes edit the PDF object model, not the content streams, and every remediation is re-rendered and compared against the original at structural similarity ≥ 0.999 before you get the file back. A tool that quietly reflows your document is worse than no tool.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the tooltip matter more than the label printed next to the field?
Because it is what a screen reader announces when focus arrives on the field. Adobe's own guidance says users hear the description read aloud when they tab to the field. The printed label is page content, and at that moment it may not be read at all.
The tooltips are English and the form is Hebrew. Does 11-005 catch that?
No. 11-005 asks whether a language can be determined, and once the catalog has a /Lang it can; it is simply the wrong one for those strings. Write the tooltips in the form's language. Watch for this when tooltips were generated from field names, which are often written in English whatever the form is in.
Is the tooltip the same as the field name?
No. /T is the field's internal name, used for form data and scripts: dob, field_17. /TU is the name meant for people. A field with only /T has no accessible name, which is condition 28-005.
Does setting the document language change how the form behaves?
No. The catalog /Lang is a statement about the language of the text. It does not touch field values, formats, calculations or submission.
Where this sits in the standards
| Standard | Reference |
|---|---|
| Matterhorn Protocol 1.1 | Checkpoint 11 (Declared Natural Language), index 11-005 |
| PDF/UA-1 (ISO 14289-1) | Clause 7.2-3 |
| WCAG 2.1 | 3.1.2 Language of Parts — Level AA |
| EN 301 549 / Section 508 / ADA Title II | All three point at WCAG 2.1 Level AA for non-web documents, so a Level A or AA criterion here is in scope for each of them. |
Related conditions
- 11-001 Natural language for text in page content cannot be determinedNo /Lang is in effect for some text: neither on the catalog, nor on an enclosing structure element, nor on a marked-content sequence.
- 28-005 A form field has neither a TU entry nor an alternative descriptionThe /TU tooltip is the accessible name of a PDF form field. Without it the field has no name at all — the visible label printed next to it is not connected to the control.
- 11-004 Natural language in the Contents entry for annotations cannot be determinedAnnotation Contents strings — link descriptions, comments — have no determinable language.
- 11-003 Natural language in the Outline entries cannot be determinedBookmark titles have no determinable language.
Other conditions in checkpoint 11
Checkpoint 11 covers declared natural language. These are its other failure conditions; the ones without a link are in the rule set but do not have a written page yet.
- 11-001 Natural language for text in page content cannot be determinedNo /Lang is in effect for some text: neither on the catalog, nor on an enclosing structure element, nor on a marked-content sequence.
- 11-002 Natural language for Alt, ActualText and E cannot be determinedAlternative text, actual text and expansion text are announced by the reader and therefore need a determinable language just as page content does.
- 11-003 Natural language in the Outline entries cannot be determinedBookmark titles have no determinable language.
- 11-004 Natural language in the Contents entry for annotations cannot be determinedAnnotation Contents strings — link descriptions, comments — have no determinable language.
- 11-006 Natural language for document metadata cannot be determinedThe XMP dc:title (and other metadata) has no xml:lang and the catalog has no /Lang.
- 11-007 Natural language is not appropriateA language is declared but it is the wrong one — a Hebrew document declared en-US, or an English abstract inside a Hebrew paper inheriting he-IL.
Check your own file. Taggart’s validator is free and unlimited — 75 of the 87 Matterhorn conditions software can decide, with the other 12 listed for you to confirm; no watermark, no expiry, and no account needed up to 60 pages.
Checked with Taggart on a generated file that fails this condition on . The Acrobat steps follow Adobe’s documentation and were not walked through by hand. Last updated .