Scores & severities

Severities

Every issue Lumtera finds has one of three severities:

Severity	Meaning	Affects the score?
Error	Lumtera is confident this is a barrier.	Yes, strongly
Needs review	A machine can't decide this on its own, such as whether alt text is accurate or a video has captions. A person should confirm or dismiss it.	A little
Tip	A best practice, including the four WCAG AAA checks.	No

Lumtera is built not to cry wolf. When it can't be sure, it says Needs review, not Error. Each check has a default severity, listed in All checks. You can change it, or switch the check off, in Settings.

Each finding also has a confidence: certain, likely or possible. A check that is only fairly sure can never report an error, and findings of possible confidence are hidden until you tick Show possible issues. They never count in the score. See How sure is each check? and How accurate is Lumtera?.

How the score is worked out

Each post, page or product gets a score from 1 to 100:

score = 100 × 0.85^errors × 0.96^items to review

Rounded, and never lower than 1. Tips don't count, and neither do dismissed items or findings ignored everywhere with Lumtera Pro. Results of guided checklists don't change the score either.

A post's score comes from the checks of its content. Whole-page results from review mode are shown separately, and never change a post's score.

Found	Score
Nothing	100
1 item to review	96
1 error	85
2 errors	72
5 errors	44

The score is colored good from 90, warning from 60 to 89, and critical below 60.

Because the penalty multiplies, the score never reaches zero. A page with 20 errors still scores lower than one with 10, and fixing any error always raises the score.

A score of 100 isn't "compliant"

100 means "no automated issues found". Automated checks find only part of what WCAG covers. See What automated testing can't do.

Site-wide numbers

On the Overview:

• Average automated score is the average of the stored scores of every checked item. Published posts count, and so do drafts, pending, private and scheduled ones. Only the content types you chose in Settings are included.
• Errors is the total number of errors. "On N items" is how many items have at least one.
• Needs review is the total number of items to review.
• Content checked is how many items have been checked, out of all items of those types. Trash and auto-drafts aren't counted.

Review coverage

Next to the score on the Overview, the Dashboard widget and the block editor sidebar, the Review coverage meter shows how much of WCAG your checks and your own testing cover. It is never merged into the score.

• The headline counts the WCAG 2.2 A and AA criteria that have evidence, out of 55. A criterion has evidence when a person recorded a pass or "not applicable" for it in the last 12 months (with no newer failure), or when content checks that cover it found no errors or items to review on your published content. Whole-page checks count once a review mode result is saved with nothing open. Focus checks that need the keyboard walk don't count, because a saved result doesn't show whether the walk ran.
• The line below says how many criteria your automated checks cover, how many of those fully and how many in part, and how many need a person.

The coverage number is worked out from the checks you have switched on, so it is your site's own number. With every free check on, content checks plus review mode's whole-page checks cover 38 of 55 criteria (1 fully, 37 in part). The checks of saved content alone cover 26 of 55. Lumtera Pro's form tests bring it to 41 of 55, and its consistency checks (Growth plan and up) to 45 of 55.

Covering is not meeting

A criterion is covered when a check looks at it. That doesn't mean your site meets it. Many criteria are covered only in part: for example, a check can find an image with no alt text, but not whether the alt text is accurate. Use the guided checklists to record the rest.

The meter is full only when every criterion has a recorded result, and even then it says "evidence recorded", never that the site conforms.

When scores update

A post's stored score updates whenever it's checked:

• when it's saved (if Check content on save is on, which is the default)
• when you run Check all content from the Overview, or Check or Check again on an item in the Content report
• when an issue on it is dismissed or restored
• when a fix is applied or undone
• when a site part it shows is fixed at the source, and Lumtera checks the pages that use it again
• when the Alt text manager adds alt text to it (this saves the post, so it's re-checked if Check content on save is on)
• when you run wp lumtera scan
• with Lumtera Pro, when the fixes queue applies or undoes a change

Changing settings doesn't re-check anything. After you change a check's severity or switch a check off, run Check all content again from the Overview to update existing results.

Live checks in the editor sidebar are never stored. They update as you type, and the stored result updates when you save.