Short-term effects of text-background color combinations on the dynamics of the accommodative response

Raimundo Jiménez, Beatriz Redondo, Rubén Molina, Miguel Ángel Martínez-Domingo, Javier Hernández-Andrés, JesúsVera.

Vision Research, Volume 166, Pages 33-42

doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2019.11.006

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to assess the accommodative response and pupillary dynamics while reading passages with different text-background color combinations on an LCD screen. Twenty healthy young adults read fourteen 2-min passages designed with fourteen different color combinations between text and background, while the accommodative and pupil responses were continuously measured with a binocular open-field autorefractometer. Our results revealed that the text-background color combination modulates the accommodative and pupillary dynamics during a 2-minutes reading task. The blue-red combination induced a heightened accommodative response, whereas positive polarities were associated with more variability of the accommodative response and smaller pupil sizes. Participants reported lower perceived ratings of legibility for text-background color combination with lower luminance contrast (white-yellow). The manipulation of text-background color did not have a significant effect on reading speed. These results may have important applications in the design of digital visual interfaces.