Your results use three different counts and four impact levels. Mixing them up is the most common way to misread a scan.
The four impact levels
| Level | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Critical | Stops someone using part of the page. A form field a screen reader cannot identify, a button with no name. |
| Serious | Makes something substantially harder. Low contrast body text, links that cannot be told apart from surrounding text. |
| Moderate | Causes friction. Content outside any page region, headings that are out of order. |
| Minor | Worth tidying, unlikely to stop anyone. |
The impact level describes the kind of problem. It helps you decide what to fix first. It does not change your compliance score, which counts requirements passed and failed. See What moves your score, and what does not.
Three different counts
- Unique issues. Distinct kinds of problem, such as "images must have alternative text". One unique issue can appear hundreds of times.
- Instances, or affected elements. Each individual place an issue occurs. Ten images with no alternative text is one unique issue and ten instances.
- Pages. How many of your scanned pages an issue appears on.
The Critical, Serious, Moderate and Minor badges at the top of the results count affected elements, not unique issues. That is why they can look alarming: one mistake in a shared header, repeated on thirty pages, adds thirty.
Reading the counts together
An issue with many instances across many pages is almost always one mistake in a shared template, such as a header, footer or product card. Fix the template once and every instance goes. An issue with many instances on one page is usually one component on that page. An issue with one instance on one page is usually a piece of content.
So a high instance count is often good news: a large number that one change will clear.