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Skynet Accessibility Checker: False Positives Explained

25 October 2026 · By John Carlsson

The free Skynet Technologies accessibility checker scored the aiwebpageseo.com home page 74.22%, semi compliant, with 167 failed checks. Its 106 Readability failures are text contrast tested at Level AA and the optional Level AAA together: our own measurements found no text below the AA level the law asks for, and 84 items below AAA only plus 20 over images that need checking by eye. Its 55 Titles and 6 General failures name no rule, element or code, and none matched anything on the live page. Our Accessibility Audit scored the same page 100/100 against WCAG 2.2.

What happened

On 25 October 2026 we ran the free Skynet Technologies accessibility checker on the aiwebpageseo.com home page. It scored the page 74.22%, "Semi Compliant", with 167 failed checks under WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2.

On the same day our own Accessibility Audit scored the same page 100/100: 25 checks passed, 0 errors and 0 warnings, against WCAG 2.2.

A gap that size needs explaining, so we went through the Skynet report line by line and checked what it said against the live page and against our own measurements. This post shows what we found.

The short version

Readability, 106 failures: this is text contrast tested at Level AA and Level AAA together. Our measurements show the page has no text below the AA level the law asks for. The failures are text that meets AA but not the optional AAA level, so they are false positives against any legal standard.
Titles, 55 failures, and General, 6 failures: the report does not name the rule behind either, and shows no element or code. We tested the likeliest explanations on the live page and none matched. A failure that names no rule and no element cannot be checked or fixed.
Graphics, Document and Forms: 0 failures, which matches our audit.
The numbers do not add up. The report splits its failures as 16 at Level A, 42 at AA and 42 at AAA. That is 100, not 167.

False positive: "Readability", 106 failures

What the report said. One Readability check, marked for visually impaired, colour blind, dyslexic and elderly visitors, at Levels AA and AAA: 174 successes and 106 failures.

What it is. That combination, text checked at AA and AAA for people with low vision and colour blindness, is text contrast. WCAG has two contrast success criteria: 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) at Level AA, which asks for 4.5:1 for normal text, and 1.4.6 Contrast (Enhanced) at Level AAA, which asks for 7:1. Skynet tested both in one check and does not say which level each failure missed. So any text between 4.5:1 and 7:1 is counted as a failure, even though it meets AA.

What our audit measured. Our audit loads the page in Chrome and measures the rendered colour of every piece of text. On this page it measured 271 text elements, close to Skynet's 280 (174 plus 106). It found:

0 text elements below the AA level.
84 text elements that pass AA but are below the optional AAA level. These are reported separately and not scored.
20 text elements over an image or gradient, where contrast cannot be measured automatically. These are listed for a person to check by eye.

84 plus 20 is 104, against Skynet's 106. Skynet's 106 failures are, in effect, text that meets the legal standard and only falls short of an optional one, plus text no automated tool can measure reliably.

What the rule says. WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) is Level AA and asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, or 3:1 for large text. 1.4.6 Contrast (Enhanced) is Level AAA and asks for 7:1, or 4.5:1 for large text. WCAG 2.2's own conformance requirements says it is not recommended that Level AAA conformance be required as a general policy for entire sites, because it is not possible to satisfy all AAA criteria for some content.

Expected: text at 4.5:1 or above for normal text. AAA is worth improving where you can, but it is not a failure.

Who complies. Our page complies with 1.4.3 at Level AA. Skynet's check counts optional AAA shortfalls as failures, without saying which level was missed.

Unverifiable: "Titles", 55 failures

What the report said. 55 failures and 0 passes in a category called Titles, across Levels A, AA and AAA: 54 in one check and 1 in another. The report shows no rule name, no element and no code for any of them.

What we tested. We checked the likeliest explanations against the live page's code:

The page has one <title>: "SEO Audit Tool for SEO, Security, Accessibility, Schema".
It has one <h1>, 3 <h2> and 19 <h3>, in a logical order.
It has no <iframe> elements, so there are no frame titles to miss.
Of its 84 links, 69 have no title attribute. That is not 54, so the check is not simply "links without a title".

Our audit passed the page title, the single H1, the heading order and all 86 link names, and its link purpose check passed even at Level AAA (2.4.9). We cannot match Skynet's 55 to anything on the page. If the check is about title attributes, it asks for something WCAG does not require: a link's accessible name comes from its text, and the title attribute is only a last resort in the W3C's Accessible Name and Description Computation.

Unverifiable: "General", 6 failures

What the report said. 6 failures at Level A in the General category, with no rule name, element or code.

What our audit found. No Level A failures at all. That includes every image alternative, form label, button name, link name, the page language, the heading structure, the main and nav landmarks, a working skip link tested with Tab and Enter, and no violations from the axe-core rules it ran.

Without the rule or the element, there is nothing to check and nothing to fix. A Level A failure is the most serious kind, so a report that claims six of them should show where they are.

Side by side

Score: Skynet, 74.22% "Semi Compliant". Our audit, 100/100.
Failures: Skynet, 167 claimed, none named. Our audit, 0 errors and 0 warnings.
Standard: Skynet, WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 with A, AA and AAA mixed together. Our audit, WCAG 2.2 with all 55 Level A and AA criteria listed, and AAA reported separately and not scored.
Contrast: Skynet, 106 failures with no level given. Our audit, 271 text elements and 33 control edges measured, 0 below AA.
Keyboard and layout: Skynet, not tested. Our audit, keyboard focus on 40 tab stops, the skip link, no sideways scrolling at 320px, 200% zoom, text spacing and both orientations.
Evidence: Skynet, no element, code or rule for any failure. Our audit, every check with its WCAG criterion and what was measured.
Further pages: Skynet, one page. Our audit, the home page plus the pricing page and the blog, all with 0 errors.

About the sales pitch

The report opens with "No accessibility system detected" and points to Skynet's All in One Accessibility product, an overlay: a script that adds a toolbar and changes the page in the visitor's browser, while the site's own code stays as it was. It closes with an offer to book a call with its team. An overlay cannot fix a contrast ratio in your stylesheet or a missing label in your HTML. Accessibility is met in the page's own code.

What the law expects

This is general information, not legal advice.

United Kingdom: public sector websites must meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018, as the GOV.UK monitoring guidance explains. Businesses and charities are covered by the Equality Act 2010, which names no technical standard; WCAG Level AA is the yardstick used.
European Union: the European Accessibility Act applies to many products and services sold to EU consumers, and its harmonised standard, EN 301 549, is based on WCAG Level AA.
United States and Canada: the ADA, Section 508 and Ontario's AODA all point to WCAG Level AA, in different versions.

None of these asks for Level AAA. A score that counts AAA shortfalls as failures says nothing about whether a site meets the law. For more, see Is WCAG a legal requirement in the UK?

How to read any automated accessibility report

Ask for the element. A failure without the code it refers to cannot be checked or fixed.
Check the level. AAA items are optional. A report that mixes them into its failures will always make a site look worse than it is.
Check the arithmetic. If the breakdown does not add up to the total, the score is not reliable.
Be wary of an overlay as the fix. A toolbar does not change your page's code.

Our Accessibility Audit costs £2.49. It checks the page in Chrome after its scripts run, against all 55 WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA criteria, reports AAA and best-practice notes separately and unscored, shows the evidence for every result, and lists which criteria still need a person to check. See a real report in our example accessibility report, and our tests of other free checkers in TraceValid Accessibility Checker: False Positives Explained and accessScan by accessiBe: False Positives Explained.

The full reports

Both reports used in this post are published in full and unedited: the Skynet Technologies report and our Accessibility Audit report for aiwebpageseo.com. See the full reports.

Sources

Try it yourself: Accessibility Audit · Example report

Frequently asked questions

Is the Skynet Technologies accessibility checker accurate?

On our home page it was not reliable. It reported 167 failed checks and a score of 74.22%, but 106 of those failures were text contrast counted at the optional AAA level alongside AA, and our measurements found no text below the AA level the law asks for. The other 61 failures named no rule, element or code, and none matched anything we could find on the live page. Its own level breakdown, 16, 42 and 42, adds up to 100, not 167.

What is the difference between WCAG AA and AAA contrast?

WCAG success criterion 1.4.3, Contrast (Minimum), is Level AA and asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 for normal text and 3 to 1 for large text. Criterion 1.4.6, Contrast (Enhanced), is Level AAA and asks for 7 to 1 and 4.5 to 1. Laws and public sector rules in the UK, the EU, the US and Canada point to Level AA. WCAG itself says AAA should not be required as a general policy for whole sites, so AAA shortfalls are not failures.

Why does an accessibility checker show failures without saying what they are?

Some free checkers show only category counts and a score, and keep the details for a paid scan or a sales call. A failure that names no rule, element or code cannot be checked against the page or fixed, so it tells you very little. A useful report shows the WCAG success criterion, the level, the element and what was measured for every result, and separates required AA failures from optional AAA notes and best-practice advice.

Will an accessibility overlay fix the problems a checker finds?

No. An overlay is a script that adds a toolbar and changes the page in the visitor's browser, while the site's own HTML and CSS stay as they were. It cannot reliably fix a contrast ratio in your stylesheet, a missing form label or a broken heading structure. WCAG success criteria are met in the page's own code, so the fix is to change the code, then test the page again in a real browser and check the results by hand.

Why do two accessibility checkers give different scores for the same page?

They test different things and count them differently. Some mix optional AAA checks into their failures, some read only the HTML source, and some load the page in a real browser and measure rendered colours, keyboard focus, zoom and reflow. Scores are also worked out with different formulas. Compare the findings, not the scores: look at the element each one names, the WCAG criterion and level it cites, and check that against the live page.