Legibility evaluation with oculomotor analysis: Relationship between contrast and legibility

Web page legibility is important because of WWW dissemination and color combinations between a foreground and a background are the crucial factors to provide sufficient legibility. In our previous studies, the visibilities of several web-safe color combinations were examined using a psychological method. In those studies, simple stimuli were used because of experimental restriction. In this study, legibility of sentences on Web sites was examined using a psychophysiological method by oculomotor and the effect of the achromatic color combinations, that is contrast, was examined with calculated reading time. The presentation stimuli were positive coloration whose font color luminance is lower than background color, and negative coloration whose font color luminance is higher than background color. And the number of characters per line in each page was arranged in the same number, and the four achromatic colors that is, the contrast between the background color and font color are 92.5, 75.0, 50.0 and 25.0 percent, were examined. As the results, it was shown that reading time of became long when the contrast. However, in the negative coloration, there were great differences between individuals. Therefore, considering web accessibility the legibility is found to be useful for using a positive coloration.