Reading from color displays: a psychophysical model

We have investigated the effects of chromatic and luminance contrast on reading colored text on multicolor displays. Stimuli were defined in a color space with three cardinal axes. Two of these axes are chromatic and maximally modulate the opponent mechanisms of color vision; the third is an achromatic axis. We measured detection and discrimination of words and nonwords. The results show that near-perfect reading at equiluminance is possible and that in terms of machine units, luminance differences are more salient than purely chromatic differences, but these differences disappear when the discrimination data are scaled for detection threshold.