Maps, floor plans, and engineering drawings in PDFs: what an accessible alternative actually looks like

Every public body publishes maps and plans: polling stations, bin collection zones, flood risk, planning applications, campus wayfinding, evacuation routes. Every engineering firm publishes drawings. These are the documents most likely to be tagged as a single Figure with alt text reading "map", which is a failure, and the ones where the question "what would the alternative even be?" is asked in good faith. This guide answers it by purpose.

Start from the question the graphic answers

A sighted reader uses a map to answer a specific question: how do I get there, which zone am I in, where is the nearest exit, what is next to this room. The accessible alternative is not a description of the picture but an answer to that question in a form a screen reader, a braille display, or a magnifier can use. W3C's complex images guidance applies: a short description that identifies the graphic and points to the alternative, and a long description that carries the essential information, which for spatial graphics is usually structured rather than prose. Carnegie Museums' accessibility guidelines make the same point for wayfinding: if a map gives directions to a location, provide text directions or a link to them next to the map.

Alternatives by type

Tagging the graphic itself

• Tag the map or plan as a Figure with a short Alt that states its type, subject, and where the alternative is: "Map of recycling collection zones A to D. The table below lists the streets in each zone and its collection day."
• Put the alternative immediately after the figure in reading order, tagged as a real Table or as headings and lists, so that a screen reader reaches it in sequence.
• Keep labels, dimensions, notes, and legends as real text. Drawings exported with text converted to outlines lose everything a screen reader could have read; check with the free tag viewer that the text is present and in an order that makes sense.
• Legends that rely on colour alone fail WCAG success criterion 1.4.1; add patterns or labels for sighted readers with colour vision deficiency, and put the legend's meaning into the alternative for everyone else.

What the law says

WCAG success criterion 1.1.1 requires a text alternative for non-text content with narrow exceptions (tests, sensory experiences, CAPTCHAs, decoration), none of which is "maps". The ADA Title II rule adopts WCAG 2.1 AA without a map exception; the Department of Justice's own fact sheet uses a PDF containing a current county park map as an example of content that is not covered by the archived-content exception, because it provides current information. Two jurisdictions do address maps directly. The European Accessibility Act, in Article 2(4)(c), excludes "online maps and mapping services" from its website and app content requirements "if essential information is provided in an accessible digital manner for maps intended for navigational use", which is the text-directions principle written into law. Canada's amended Accessible Canada Regulations (December 2025) require maps, technical drawings, and images to conform to the ICT standard only to the extent feasible. In each case the practical expectation is the same: the information the graphic carries must be available in an accessible form, even where the graphic itself cannot be.

When to send it to a specialist

Automated tagging can add a Figure and extract labels; it cannot write a room adjacency list or judge which streets fall in which zone. DocAccessible's pipeline treats specialist notation, complex drawings, and uncertain reading order as documents that stay in private draft or take the specialist route rather than being published from automation, and the manual remediation service is scoped separately for exact-layout files. For an organisation with many such documents, the durable fix is upstream: publish the underlying data (the zone table, the room schedule, the parts list) as an accessible page or dataset, and let the map be an illustration of it rather than the only source.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

The statements above rest on the primary sources below. Where a source is a law or standard, the version and date named in the text are the ones checked on the review date. This guide is general information, not legal advice.

1. W3C WAI: Images Tutorial, Complex Images
2. Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh: Web Accessibility Guidelines, Maps
3. ADA.gov: Fact Sheet, New Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps Provided by State and Local Governments . The park map example under the archived content exception.
4. EUR-Lex: Directive (EU) 2019/882, Article 2(4)(c)
5. Canada Gazette, Part II, December 17, 2025: Regulations Amending the Accessible Canada Regulations (SOR/2025-255) . Maps, technical drawings, and images conform to the extent feasible.