Now there seem to be varying factors into contrast and legibility. Jason Harrison – Post Doctoral Fellow, Imager Lab Manager – Sensory Perception and Interaction Research Group, University of British Columbia

Part of this has to do with light levels: with a bright display (white background) the iris closes a bit more, decreasing the effect of the 'deformed' lens with a dark display (black background) the iris opens to receive more light and the deformation of the lens creates a much fuzzier focus at the eye. People with astigmatism (approximately 50% of the population) find it harder to read white text on black than black text on white. When using a dark background with strong light letter forms, the iris opens to allow more light in, but that causes letter forms to blur. Since the eye is focused, dark letter forms on light backgrounds are easier to read. As this article on UXMovement states, 'white stimulates all three types of color sensitive visual receptors in the human eye in nearly equal amounts.' It causes the eye to focus by tightening the iris. The reason why this matters is because of focus. Vigliani (Eds.), Ergonomic Aspects of Visual Display Terminals (pp. Improving the legibility of visual display units through contrast reversal.

For example, Bauer and Cavonius (1980) found that participants were 26% more accurate in reading text when they read it with dark characters on a light background. However, most studies have shown that dark characters on a light background are superior to light characters on a dark background (when the refresh rate is fairly high). There has been a lot of research on this topic since the 1980s and a lot of it still holds true today.

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