Color Contrast - Some Examples

[Which is most pleasing for you to read?]

A study by G. M. Murch (1987) about readings in human and computer interaction, compared various background and foreground text colors for readability, finding black text on a light green background as the most legible (100%), followed by blue text on a white background (94%), and white text on a black or blue background (75%). One should consider using light grey or pastel background rather than white backgrounds.

Learners with dyslexia tend to prefer color pairs with a higher color and brightness contrast while people with dyslexia read faster when color pairs have lower contrasts. For instance, the color pair which was the fastest to read was the combination of black & crème. Black text over yellow background presents the largest fixation duration. The effects are similar to using a yellow highlighter on black text.

Use an HTML Color Picker to find color codes and then use WebAIM's Contrast Checker.

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