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Good Background Colors for Readers: A Study of People with and without Dyslexia

Authors:

Jeffrey P. BighamAuthors Info & Claims

ASSETS '17: Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Pages 72 - 80

https://doi.org/10.1145/3132525.3132546

Published: 19 October 2017 Publication History

Abstract

The use of colors to enhance the reading of people with dyslexia have been broadly discussed and is often recommended, but evidence of the effectiveness of this approach is lacking. This paper presents a user study with 341 participants (89 with dyslexia) that measures the effect of using background colors on screen readability. Readability was measured via reading time and distance travelled by the mouse. Comprehension was used as a control variable. The results show that using certain background colors have a significant impact on people with and without dyslexia. Warm background colors, Peach, Orange and Yellow, significantly improved reading performance over cool background colors, Blue, Blue Grey and Green. These results provide evidence to the practice of using colored backgrounds to improve readability; people with and without dyslexia benefit, but people with dyslexia may especially benefit from the practice given the difficulty they have in reading in general.

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Cited By

Lee HXie I(2025)Disability, Accessibility, and Universal DesignEncyclopedia of Libraries, Librarianship, and Information Science10.1016/B978-0-323-95689-5.00139-5(511-518)Online publication date: 2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-95689-5.00139-5
Cai TNiklaus AKerr BKraley MBylinskii Z(2024)COR Themes for Readability from Iterative FeedbackProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642108(1-23)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642108
Ali KZahra D(2024)Ten tips for effective use and quality assurance of multiple‐choice questions in knowledge‐based assessmentsEuropean Journal of Dental Education10.1111/eje.12992Online publication date: 28-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1111/eje.12992
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Index Terms

Good Background Colors for Readers: A Study of People with and without Dyslexia
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
  2. User characteristics
    1. People with disabilities

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Information & Contributors

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ASSETS '17: Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 2017

450 pages

ISBN:9781450349260

DOI:10.1145/3132525

General Chair:
Amy Hurst
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Leah Findlater
University of Washington, USA
,
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research, USA

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGACCESS: ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 19 October 2017

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National Science Foundation
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ASSETS '17

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SIGACCESS

ASSETS '17: The 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 20 - November 1, 2017

Maryland, Baltimore, USA

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ASSETS '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 28 of 126 submissions, 22%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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Cited By

Lee HXie I(2025)Disability, Accessibility, and Universal DesignEncyclopedia of Libraries, Librarianship, and Information Science10.1016/B978-0-323-95689-5.00139-5(511-518)Online publication date: 2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-95689-5.00139-5
Cai TNiklaus AKerr BKraley MBylinskii Z(2024)COR Themes for Readability from Iterative FeedbackProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642108(1-23)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642108
Ali KZahra D(2024)Ten tips for effective use and quality assurance of multiple‐choice questions in knowledge‐based assessmentsEuropean Journal of Dental Education10.1111/eje.12992Online publication date: 28-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1111/eje.12992
Boyd LBoyd L(2024)Neuro-Inclusive Design Considerations for Assistive and Accessible Technologies and BeyondThe Sensory Accommodation Framework for Technology10.1007/978-3-031-48843-6_8(113-124)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48843-6_8
Boyd LBoyd L(2024)Timing is Everything: Temporal Processing and MultiSensory IntegrationThe Sensory Accommodation Framework for Technology10.1007/978-3-031-48843-6_7(101-111)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48843-6_7
Boyd LBoyd L(2024)Sensory Processing in AutismThe Sensory Accommodation Framework for Technology10.1007/978-3-031-48843-6_3(27-40)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48843-6_3
Boyd LBoyd L(2024)Technologies Across the Disciplines for Autistic UsersThe Sensory Accommodation Framework for Technology10.1007/978-3-031-48843-6_2(13-26)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48843-6_2
Alsalem NAlmustanyir AAlhassan MAlmutleb EAlluwimi MAlabdulkader B(2023)Can chromatic text/background improve Arabic reading performance?Saudi Journal of Ophthalmology10.4103/sjopt.sjopt_44_2337:3(218)Online publication date: 2023
https://doi.org/10.4103/sjopt.sjopt_44_23
Teixeira ABrito-Costa SEspada SAntúnes FMercader Rubio IGutiérrez Ángel NPérez Esteban MPinel Martínez C(2023)Exploración del interletreado: el impacto en la habilidad de lectura y la legibilidad del texto entre estudiantes universitarios portugueses: un estudio pilotoRetos de la psicología y la educación en contextos universitarios10.14679/2156(147-160)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.14679/2156
Cowhitt TGreany TDowney C(2023)Storytelling With Networks: Realizing the Explanatory Potential of Network Diagrams Through the Integration of Qualitative DataInternational Journal of Qualitative Methods10.1177/1609406923118936922Online publication date: 16-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069231189369
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