Map Alt Text: 10 Real Examples From UK Sites
By AutoBoost Team · 2026-10-29 · 5 min read
English Heritage uses the same alt text, "Direction Map", on the map for every property we checked. We found it on 18 different pages, for 18 different places. On 29 October 2026 we fetched the HTML of about 240 public pages from 201 UK sites, mostly contact, location, travel, tourism and council pages. Many blocked us or returned errors, and we skipped those. We kept every site where a map was a real image with an alt attribute we could read, which gave us 10 sites. The alt text is copied exactly as it appears in the HTML. We judged each one by its own words and its place on the page, so a verdict is about the alt text, not about how the map looks.
Key takeaways
- Most maps were not images at all. On most pages we loaded, there was no map image in the HTML to check. Only 10 of 201 sites gave us one.
- Half of the 10 had a fault. The short ones were the worst: "Map" (3 characters) and "Map image" (9) say nothing about where the map is.
- The two best examples were 56 and 72 characters long. They said what kind of map it is and what it covers.
- One site added nine map pins with alts like "Location Pin 1", so a listener hears numbered pins with no names.
Ten maps from ten sites
| Site | Alt text | Characters | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| English Heritage, Stonehenge | Direction Map | 13 | Fault: same alt on 18 different maps, and it never names the place |
| Cairngorms National Park | Map of Scotland showing where Cairngorms park is located | 56 | Good |
| National Rail, stations | Still shot of the National Rail Interactive Route Map | 53 | Fine: names the map, but "still shot of" adds nothing |
| Visit Pembrokeshire | Map | 3 | Fault: one word, no place, repeated for the mobile and desktop copies |
| Canal and River Trust, places to visit | map of the UK | 13 | Fine: right subject, but does not say it is the canal network |
| Visit Isle of Wight | missing (no alt attribute) | n/a | Fault: missing |
| Visit Inverness Loch Ness | Things to do map | 16 | Fine: says its purpose, not its area |
| Parkdean Resorts | Map image | 9 | Fault: says "image" and nothing about what the map shows |
| National Express, help | Use our Route Map to plan your journey and buy National Express coach tickets | 77 | Fault: sales copy that tells you what to do, instead of describing the map |
| Discover Britain | Hundred Acre Wood map illustration for Winnie the Pooh by Ernest Shepard | 72 | Good |
Pins, directions and what a map alt can carry
A map is hard to describe in full. You cannot list every road and pin in an alt attribute, and you should not try. Give the place and the purpose. If the page relies on the map for directions, such as a contact page, also write the address and the route in plain text next to it.
Pins are the clearest example of a map's limits. Visit Pembrokeshire adds nine map pins with alts like "Location Pin 1", so a screen reader user hears a run of numbered pins with no names. A pin worth announcing needs the name of what it marks. One worth hiding gets an empty alt.
Type, area and purpose
Our two good examples do the same three things.
- They say what kind of map it is. "Map of Scotland" and "map illustration" tell the reader the type straight away.
- They say what area or subject it covers. The Cairngorms alt names both Scotland and the park. The Discover Britain alt names the Hundred Acre Wood and the artist.
- They say why it is there. Cairngorms says the map shows where the park is located, which is the point of the picture.
The weaker examples show what to leave out. "Still shot of" and "Image" describe the file, not the map. "Use our Route Map to plan your journey" is a call to action, and it belongs in the link or the page text.
Five sites with a fault
Five of the 10 sites had a fault. Three were fine and two were good.
- Too short to be useful: 2 sites. "Map" and "Map image" give the type but no place.
- Same alt on different images: 1 site, 18 pages. English Heritage uses "Direction Map" for Stonehenge, Dover Castle, Whitby Abbey and 15 other properties. A visitor on any one page learns nothing about where it is.
- Says "image": 1 site. Parkdean Resorts, "Map image". The reader already knows it is an image.
- Missing: 1 site. Visit Isle of Wight has no alt attribute on its homepage map. Some screen readers will read out the file name instead.
- Promotional copy instead of a description: 1 site. National Express.
One site has two faults at once (Parkdean is both short and says "image"), so the list adds up to more than five. We did not find any map alt text stuffed with keywords or file names.
Length did not decide quality. Across the nine alt texts that existed, the lengths were 3, 9, 13, 13, 16, 53, 56, 72 and 77 characters, with a median of 16 and a mean of about 35. The faulty alts of 3, 9 and 13 characters were too short to name a place, and the one long fault (77) was long because it was a sales line. The good two sat at 56 and 72. Around 40 to 80 characters is enough room for the type, the place and the purpose.
Tip: write the address beside the map
If someone must reach a place using your map, the address and route need to be real text on the page, because the alt cannot carry them. Then keep the map's alt to the place and the purpose. Maps overlap with infographic alt text and icon alt text, and the main guide to bulk alt text in WordPress covers the whole library.
The free AutoBoost SEO plugin pairs your WordPress site with the AutoBoost SEO app. The app drafts missing alt text for the images in your posts in bulk, and you read each suggestion before anything saves to the post and the media library. If a draft only says "map", edit it first.