Chromaticity contrast, luminance contrast, and legibility of text

Abstract

Abstract— The purpose of this investigation was to determine if color differences can improve legibility and compensate for insufficient luminance contrast. Several authors previously have answered this question positively on the basis of performance experiments. We argue that a valid answer cannot be given unless subjective data are used. In four experiments, subjective ratings were collected pertaining to multicolor CRT text displays. The displays were systematically varied with respect to both luminance contrast and chromaticity contrast. The results indicate that chromaticity contrast and luminance contrast are additive only under specific conditions. Chromaticity contrast cannot improve legibility if an acceptable level of luminance contrast is present. Generally, chromaticity contrast cannot be substituted for luminance contrast.

Effects of screen luminance combination and text color on visual performance with TFT-LCD

“…This result was consistent with the findings by Spenkelink and Besuijen (1996), Shieh and Lin (2000), and Lin (2003), but contradictory to the findings by and Shieh and Lin (2000) that color combinations have a profound effect on visual performance.…”

“…Equal luminance presentation condition can eliminate the confounding of contrast ratio effect. Third, the effect of text color may be obscured when screen luminance combination is adequate (Lin and Shieh, 2001;Lin, 2003;Spenkelink and Besuijen, 1996). Fourth, the polarity was positive and fixed; it might avoid the confounding of polarity effect.…”

Computational color combination analysis of Papilionidae butterflies as aesthetic objects

“…58 In shape discrimination tasks, luminance vision performs better than color vision. 59 In fact, contrast in brightness affects performance in various visual tasks [60][61][62][63] and subjective evaluations [64][65][66] concerning the legibility of texts and icons. Furthermore, legibility tightly correlates with pleasantness.…”

Effects of Color Combination and Ambient Illumination on Visual Perception Time with TFT-LCD

“…Researchers have reported that chromaticity contrast does not effectively improve visual performance if an acceptable luminance contrast ratio was present; this result holds both in cathode ray tube displays (Spenkelink & Besuijen, 1996;Ojanpää & Näsänen, 2003) and in TFT-LCD (Shieh & Lin, 2000;Chen & Lin, 2004;Lin & Huang, 2006).…”