Red, amber and green (RAG) status indicators are everywhere in dashboards and reports. They feel intuitive, fast and familiar, but for many users, they don’t communicate what we think they do.

In this lightning talk, I’ll briefly highlight the accessibility issues caused by relying on RAG colours, particularly for people with colour vision impairments and low vision. I’ll explain why colour-only signalling is a common accessibility failure and how it can undermine clarity and trust in reporting.

I’ll introduce tools that allow us to check accessibility issues in our reports, helping teams spot problems early and make more informed decisions about their designs.