Quote:
Originally Posted by PerfectMartini
Isn't black on white roughly the same contrast as white on black?
A lot of people with computer monitor related eye problems are told to switch to light text on a dark background.
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I'm about to go all technical writer geeky on y'all.
PM
It's not the same at all due to how we perceive objects on the screen. There's a property called figure ground observation (that came out of Gestalt Psychology) in which which the viewer assigns edges to regions for purposes of shape determination, determination of depth across an edge, and the allocation of visual attention. Light Text on a black background is actually easier on the eyes than white on black because of there's more contrast between the background and the letter. If there's not enough contrast, the eye has a difficult time seeing it.
For Example:
I bet you have a hard time seeing this text
The text above is logical, but the eye can't see it to comprehend it because it can't easily distinguish between the light blue background and the white text. However there's enough contrast that you can read black text just fine.
Probably one of the best examples for Figure Ground is the image below:
Because of how the image is drawn, the brain either intreprets it as two people talking OR as a cup with a very ornate base.